The War Speeches, a full set of seven British first editions - Into Battle, The Unrelenting Struggle, The End of the Beginning, Onwards to Victory, The Dawn of Liberation, Victory, and Secret Session
$1,000 · Offered by Biblio
First edition
London: Cassell and Company Ltd., 1941-1946. First edition, first printings. Hardcover. Here is a full jacketed set of British first edition, first printings of Churchill's seven war speeches volumes. Few books are as emblematic of Churchills literary and leadership gifts as his war speeches volumes. Between 1941 and 1946, Churchill's war speeches were published in seven individual volumes. The British first editions are visually striking, but were printed on cheap wartime paper, bound in coarse cloth, and wrapped in bright, fragile dust jackets. They proved highly susceptible to spotting, soiling, and fading, so the passage of time has been hard on most surviving first editions. This full first edition, first printing set features very good minus or better volumes in very good minus or better dust jackets. The blue cloth bindings remain square, clean, and tight with just a few bruised corners and light shelf wear to extremities. Only the spines of the first and third volumes show toning. The second volume has a single pinhole at the center left of the front cover, penetrating within through the prelims to p.1. We find no previous ownership marks of any kind in the set. Spotting, endemic to the wartime paper, is the chief defect, and it is variable. In general, it is confined to prelims and page edges, though entirely absent in the first two volumes, heavy only to the first and final leaves and page edges of the second volume. There were two states of the first printing of t
- Publisher: Cassell and Company Ltd.
- Year: 1941
- Edition: First Edition
- Printing: first
- Binding: hardcover
Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.