MY EARLY LIFE: A Roving Commission
-First English Edition in Dust Jacket-
1930
First English Edition (First Printing/Second State)
Thornton Butterworth Ltd. [London]
Biblio: (Cohen A91.1.b) (Woods A37a)
8vo (392 pages, with photo frontispiece, maps, plans, one folding map, 16 tipped-in illustrations)
Hardcover in Dust Jacket [Rough pink cloth]
Item Number: 209865
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Collector's Guide
My Early Life is the only volume of personal memoirs that Churchill ever wrote. It is, arguably, his most entertaining book and an excellent entry point into his writing; a vivacious memoir of youth and wayward school boyhood. Published in the U.S. under the title A Roving Commission, the book has been endlessly re-issued in a variety of editions. True first editions, however, remain quite rare.
Description
The rarest of the rare: A First English edition in the original dust jacket.
The very fragile jacket is intact and retains 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. The binding is the Second State of the First Printing (per Cohen), with the variant five-line title block on the cover and the cancel-half-title listing the first volume of THE WORLD CRISIS that was missing on First State half-title pages. The binding is crisp and tight, the corners are razor sharp and the contents are fine and unfoxed.
A prize, to be sure.