MEMOIRS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
-First American Abridged Edition (Red Binding Variant)-
1959
First American Abridged Edition
Houghton Mifflin Company [Boston]
Biblio: (Cohen A240.9.b) (Woods A123cb)
16mo (1,056 pages , illustrated with maps and diagrams)
Hardcover in Dust Jacket [Red cloth]
Item Number: 14800
$225.00
Collector's Guide
The Second World War, also known as Winston Churchill’s War Memoirs, won Churchill the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953. Published in six volumes that appeared over six years, the books each came out first in the U.S. under the following titles: THE GATHERING STORM (Volume I/1948), THEIR FINEST HOUR (Volume II/1949), THE GRAND ALLIANCE (Volume III/1950), THE HINGE OF FATE (Volume IV/1950), CLOSING THE RING (Volume V/1951) and TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY (Volume VI/1953).
The ensuing English editions, issued within months of the American, contained numerous corrections and even a few additional maps. The English edition is therefore considered more definitive, though today the American edition may be rarer. The set was simultaneously published by the Book-of-the-Month-Club in America, printed on the same presses as the first editions, and thus can easily be confused with them. An excellent one-volume abridgment was published in 1959; largely the work of Churchill’s research assistant, Denis Kelly, though Churchill did contribute an interesting epilogue covering the years 1945-1957.
Description
A virtually mint copy in an unclipped dust jacket of the First American edition Second Binding variant (according to the Cohen Bibliography) that replicated the red cloth binding of the original six-volume SECOND WORLD WAR First American edition. There are some modest edge creases at the spine head and tail, of the jacket, else fine.
Rare thus and quite striking.