The Postwar Speeches, a full set of jacketed first editions: The Sinews of Peace, Europe Unite, In the Balance, Stemming the Tide, and The Unwritten Alliance

Winston S. Churchill

Verlag: Cassell and Company Ltd., London, 1948

Here is a jacketed set of all five of Churchill's post-WWII speech volumes, increasingly challenging to assemble thus. This set is unequivocally the best we have ever encountered, and virtually unobtainable thus. All five volumes in this set are in truly fine condition, their jackets near fine plus or better. All five cloth bindings are strikingly clean, tight, and square with sharp corners, bright spine gilt, and virtually no wear. The contents of all five volumes are uniformly bright and as clean as the come. We find no spotting. We find no previous ownership marks. Even the page edges are impressively clean, with only light dust soiling to the top edges of The Sinews of Peace and a hint of age-toning to the otherwise immaculate Stemming the Tide and The Unwritten Alliance page edges.The dust jackets are remarkably impressive. All five jackets are unclipped, retaining the original front flap prices. All five jackets are entirely unfaded, with exceptional color and shelf presentation. Trivial shelf wear is confined to extremities and perhaps no worse than might be encountered if these books were brand new and just shelved in a local bookstore. Stemming the Tide has the more desirable and elusive first state dust jacket. The only flaw of note is a bit of spotting to the white flap fold corners of In the Balance and Stemming the Tide. All five dust jackets are fitted with clear, removable, archival covers. These volumes span the period from Demobilization in late 1945, when Churchill was Leader of the Opposition, through his second Premiership (1951-1955) into a time when Churchill passes "into a living national memorial" of the time he has lived and the Nation, Empire, and free world he has served.The events encompassed by these years are in many ways no less dramatic than those of the war years - the unraveling of the British Empire, the post-war recovery, the onset of the Cold War, Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb, development of the hydrogen bomb, and the beginning of the space age (to name a few).These postwar speech volumes are scarcer than Churchill s War Speeches volumes; all five of these books had only a single printing each. Moreover, not all of the fourth volume s sheets were issued in a dust jacket matching the rest of the volumes; the later issue dust jacket is solid black with no matching oak leaf border at the top and bottom edges. Also of note, the fifth and final volume, The Unwritten Alliance, is the last of Churchill's books published in his lifetime and was issued only in Britain, with no U.S. edition. Reference: Cohen A241.1, A246.1, A255.1, A264.1, A273; Woods/ICS A124(a), A128(a), A130(a), A137(a), A142; Langworth pages 184, 296, 301, 309, 338. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 007245

Bibliografische Details

Titel: The Postwar Speeches, a full set of jacketed...
Verlag: Cassell and Company Ltd., London
Erscheinungsdatum: 1948
Einband: Hardcover
Zustand des Schutzumschlags: Schutzumschlag
Auflage: First edition, only printing.