THE SECOND WORLD WAR
-Second Chartwell Edition-
1983
Second Chartwell Edition (Book-of-the-Month Club Binding)
Houghton Mifflin Company [Boston]
Biblio: (Cohen A240.22(Woods A123oa)
8vo (Maps, diagrams and tables throughout.)
Hardcover [Quarter-blue leather and Yellowish-brown cloth]
Item Number: 212168
$350.00
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
As-new set of this sumptuous 1983 reissue, bound in quarter-blue leather with map-imprinted endpapers and a color reproduction of one of Churchill’s Chartwell paintings tipped onto the front cover of each volume. Without dust jackets, as issued.
The text is taken from Churchill’s definitive rewrite for the First Chartwell edition of 1955, the individual book size is roughly ten percent larger than the original edition.
This set was published simultaneously by Houghton Mifflin and the Book-of-the-Month Club (just as the original First American edition had been). The two versions are virtually identical, distinguishable solely by their topstains: rust-colored for Houghton Mifflin’s Trade Edition; yellow for the Book-of-the-Month Club, as here.
In virtually mint condition.