OCTOBER AND “MY EARLY LIFE”
October is the anniversary month of MY EARLY LIFE‘s publication. The most delightfully readable of Winston Churchill’s books, MY EARLY LIFE opens a revealing window onto the man that Churchill grew up to be, after overcoming the tribulations of a childhood that was often decidedly painful. Published on October 20, 1930, MY EARLY LIFE would be Churchill’s only volume of personal memoirs, and remains a testament to his greatest personal attribute: Resiliency.
The book was written as an indirect result of the Wall Street Crash, which Winston Churchill literally had witnessed firsthand while visiting New York City the year before, also in October, on October 24, 1929:”Black Thursday.” (This included seeing a man leap to his death just below Churchill’s window at the Savoy Plaza Hotel).
Wall Street’s “Great Crash” brought the utter destruction of Churchill’s own highly-leveraged personal fortune. He was forced to economize upon returning home by largely closing up Chartwell, leaving only his study there unsealed and accessible. To replenish his severely depleted coffers, he quickly plundered his published magazine work for marketable book projects, beginning with a memoir covering his childhood, wayward school years, army service in India and early career as a young war correspondent.
Supplementing the existing magazine material with new text that he dictated at Chartwell during April, May and June of 1930, Churchill titled his book, MY EARLY LIFE: A Roving Commission (in the U.S., publisher Charles Scribner oddly opted for A ROVING COMMISSION, the book’s subtitle, as a more marketable main title). MY EARLY LIFE appeared in October to laudatory reviews in Britain and strong sales. Unlike most of Churchill’s thirty-seven books, it has never gone out of print.
“Don’t be content with things as they are,” Churchill wrote in MY EARLY LIFE. “‘The earth is yours and the fullness thereof.’ Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities…Don’t take No for an answer. Never submit to failure.”
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NEW BOOK RECOMMENDATION OF THE MONTH
WINSTON’S BANDITS
Churchill and His Maverick Friends
by Adrian Phillips
A very absorbing look at Churchill’s brilliant, delightfully dicey assortment of close friends during his “Wilderness Years” of the 1930s: Lord Beaverbrook, “Prof” Lindemann, Brendan Bracken, Bob Boothby, along with his son-in-law Duncan Sandys, and his own son Randolph.
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PRECIOUS PRIZE OF THE MONTH
“MY EARLY LIFE”
FIRST EDITION in DUST JACKET
The rarest of the rare: A First English edition in the very fragile original dust jacket, intact and retaining brilliant pink color on the front and rear faces. The spine color has faded out almost completely but the spine type has not; it remains vivid. There is horizontal loss approximately 2 1/2-inches in length and 1-inch in width along the left upper edge of the front face and jagged vertical loss approximately 1-inch wide and deep at the spine head. The jacket is otherwise in exceptionally good condition, with edge-chips and closed tears that do not detract. The book itself is in beautiful condition, bound in smooth pink cloth that retains most of its glorious original color, with only nominal fading to the fade-prone spine.
A prize, to be sure.