Beschreibung
This is a superior, full set of four British first edition, first printings in dust jackets, featuring very good plus or better volumes in very good plus dust jackets. The British first trade edition of Winston Churchill s monumental biography of his great ancestor, John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, is physically impressive. The books measure 9.25 x 6.25 inches and are roughly 2 inches thick. Each is bound in plum cloth with beveled edges and the Marlborough coat of arms gilt on the front cover. Moreover, each volume is profusely illustrated, the contents bound with headbands, and gilt top edge. Unfortunately, the plum cloth binding of Volumes I-III proved highly susceptible to sun fading. (A different, more fade-resistant dye was used in Volume IV.) Without dust jackets, Volumes I-III are nearly always faded and jacketed first editions are scarce.Particularly scarce are first printing dust jackets for Volumes I & II. Collectors should be wary of price-clipped dust jackets, as later impression Volume I & II dust jackets state either "2nd Impression" or "3rd Impression" on the lower front flap beside the price. No such problem applies to Volumes III & IV, which each had only a single printing.This set s bindings are beautifully clean, bright, and tight, with sharp corners, vivid gilt, and only trivial hints of shelf wear, confined to extremities. The contents are tight, clean, and complete. The sole previous ownership mark we find is a Second World War "Christmas , 1942" gift inscription from a mother to a son on the Volume III front free endpaper. The contents of all four volumes are crisp, with three of the volumes feeling unread. The gilt top edges remain uniformly bright. Spotting, endemic to the edition, is light, primarily confined to endpapers, prelims, and fore and bottom edges. Modest age-toning shows only shows on the fore and bottom edges.All four first printing dust jackets are unclipped, retaining their original front flap prices, and highly complete. Fractional chipping the worst of it a small chip to the top edge of the Volume IV front face is entirely confined to the maroon edge margins. Moreover, all four jackets are uncommonly bright with only the mildest color shift between the jacket faces and spines. Shelf presentation is quite good. The chief defect of these jackets is light overall soiling. All four jackets are protected beneath clear, removable, archival covers. Winston Churchill's biography of John Churchill was initially conceived a full 40 years before publication of the final volume. Marlborough ultimately took 10 years of research and writing and is the most substantial published work of Churchill's 1930s "wilderness years". This decade saw Churchill pass into his sixties with his own future as uncertain as that of his nation. Churchill may have wondered more than once if the life history he was writing would eclipse his own. Of course, it did not; the final volume was published almost exactly one year before the outbreak of the Second World War and just twenty months before Churchill became wartime prime minister.Richard Langworth says "To understand the Churchill of the Second World War, the majestic blending of his commanding English with historical precedent, one has to read Marlborough." T. E. Lawrence ("Of Arabia") wrote to Churchill in fulsome praise upon finishing Volume I: "Marlborough has the big scene-painting, the informed pictures of men, the sober comment on political method, the humour, irony and understanding… It is history, solemn and decorative." Upon reading the proofs, James Lewis Garvin, editor of The Observer, wrote "I think it to be… the greatest of all your works." When Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953, it was partly for "mastery of historical and biographical description" displayed in Marlborough. Reference: Cohen A97.2(I-IV).a, Woods/ICS A40(aa), Langworth p.166. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 007978
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