MY AFRICAN JOURNEY
-First Hardcover Colonial Edition-
1908
First Hardcover Colonial Edition
Hodder & Stoughton [London]
Biblio: (Cohen A27.2) (Woods A12)
8vo (242 pages, with 60 photographs, 3 maps, tissue protected frontis photo, 18-page rear publisher’s catalogue.)
Hardcover [Deep red pictorial cloth]
Item Number: 14566
$3,500.00
Collector's Guide
My African Journey is Winston Churchill’s travelogue account of his whirlwind tour of Britain’s East-Africa territories as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies; his first official government office. The book features eloquent and perceptive observations about Africa, and much big-game hunting, with young Churchill as guide. The first English edition is particularly coveted for its handsome cover woodcut of the author posed beside a trophy rhinoceros. The more plainly-bound American edition, which utilized English first edition sheets, has no woodcut on its brownish-red buckram cover, yet it is the rarer volume.
Description
This is an exceedingly good copy of the rare First Colonial cloth edition, “intended for circulation only in India and the British colonies.” Harsher climate conditions in the colonies generally resulted in low survival rates for these editions. This copy is surprisingly fresh. The cloth is especially bright, with no spine fade, and brilliant gilt lettering, including the asterisk at the base of the spine, which identifies this as a Colonial edition. There is some rubbing to the front spine joint and front face, with a hint of spotting in the cloth and some fraying to the turned corners. The contents are fine and virtually unfoxed, with light tanning to the endpapers. A vintage Ceylon bookshop blindstamp is embossed on the front free endpaper.
Very rare thus.