Books

London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1930. First edition, first printing. Hardcover. This is the first edition, first printing of Churchill’s extremely popular autobiography in the extravagantly rare dust jacket. My Early Life sold very well at the time and has seen a great many editions since, many of them collectible, but of course a premium attaches to first editions. Jacketed examples are among the most elusive prizes in the Churchill canon. The vivid plum color of both the binding and dust jacket proved incredibly vulnerable to sunning. Whether because of sunning, the fact that this popular book appears to have been widely read, or the thin, fragile jacket paper, only a precious handful of first edition dust jackets seem to survive. This is one of those few. The spine is toned, as is the case with all of the few examples we have encountered. The spine also has a series of small losses, but the jacket is otherwise impressively complete, with only modest wear to extremities.…

My Early Life is an autobiographical work by Winston Churchill. It covers his birth in 1874 to his first few years in Parliament.

First editions can be identified by the publisher's name Butterworth on the bottom of the spine and title page, as later editions were published by other publishers.