LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL
-Signed First One-Volume Unabridged Edition in the Rare Dust Jacket-
1907
First English One-Volume Edition
Macmillan & Co. [London]
Biblio: (Cohen A17.4) (Woods A8b)
8vo (907 pages, five illustrations, two in color.)
Hardcover in Dust Jacket [Plum cloth]
Item Number: 212939
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Collector's Guide
Lord Randolph Churchill was Winston Churchill’s first work of biography and an impassioned two-volume defense of his maligned father’s posthumous reputation. It was subsequently issued in an unabridged one-volume edition and is a bulwark of any Churchill collection.
Description
This unique mint copy in the extraordinarily rare dust jacket is inscribed and signed on the front free endpaper: “To R. Randolph Bruce from Winston S. Churchill. With all good wishes for 1930. Dec. 27, 1929.” Bruce’s bookplate is affixed to the front pastedown.
The dust jacket, which is almost never seen, is here nearly pristine, with only tiny chips and miniscule separation at the jacket spine head, and a single chip to the front face. The book is pristine, without a flaw, including the normally fade-prone spine, which is here entirely unfaded. The book is preserved in a handsome burgundy cloth clamshell solander, with glit-lettered black leather spine label. Laid-in are materials relating to the book’s provenance, including a later presentation gift card from Bruce’s step-daughter-in-law.
ROBERT RANDOLPH BRUCE (1863-1942) was the 13th Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, from 1926 to 1931. During Churchill’s extended 1929 North American tour, which began in Canada (via a special railway car provided by the Canadian Pacific Railroad, stocked with everything Churchill might need, including a stenographic typist) the Churchill party resided at Government House in Victoria, B.C., for three days, hosted by Lieutenant-Governor Bruce. Churchill fell in love with the natural majesty of the Canadian landscape and the “fortunes” it potentially offered. “Darling, I am greatly attracted to this country,” he wrote to to his wife Clementine. Still, the foreign scenery also moved him to morose thoughts about the political climate back home. “I have made up my mind that if Neville Chamberlain is made leader of the Conservative Party or anyone else of that kind, I clear out of politics & see if I cannot make you and the kittens a little more comfortable before I die.”