This Item Has Been Sold
MY EARLY LIFE: A Roving Commission
-First English Edition-
1930
First English Edition (First State/Second Binding)
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 (without Dust Jacket) [Rough pink cloth]
Item Number: 202625
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
This is a very good copy of the First Printing of the First English edition in the First State Binding (per Cohen) with the three-line cover title block and a half-title list of Churchill works that omits Volume I of THE WORLD CRISIS.
Bound in rough pink cloth, this copy is in exceptionally fresh condition, the cloth retaining its pink luster on the front and rear faces. The notoriously fade-prone spine is significantly less faded than usual and in robust, well-rounded health. The binding is crisp, the corners are sharp and the contents are fine and unfoxed, with a miniscule bookshop ink stamp on the lower edge of the front free endpaper.
A truly beautiful copy overall.