Books

First edition, first impression, in a very presentable example of the extremely rare dust jacket, retaining much of its vibrant colour. A conspicuously attractive copy of Churchill's "witty and elegiac account of his youth shot through with regret at the decline of the social and imperial order in which he had grown up" (ODNB). My Early Life, Churchill's first volume of sustained biography, is a highly entertaining account of his childhood, schooldays at Harrow, military training at Sandhurst, experiences as a war correspondent in Cuba, and service attached to the Malakand Field Force on the NW Frontier of India, charging with the 21st Lancers at Omdurman, and as a POW in South Africa during the Boer War. This copy is of the second state, with 12 lines of Churchill titles on the half-title verso, and in the second state binding, with 5-line lettering to the front cover (the first state has 3-line lettering). Octavo. Original pinkish violet cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Housed in a burgundy quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Half-tone frontispiece and 15 other plates, folding map, maps to text. Gilt of spine a little oxidised, a few other minor pale marks, slight tape residue to front free endpaper recto and offsetting to following leaf, a bright, square copy, title page unopened; jacket spine sunned, variable fading to panels, a few scuffs to front, splits to folds, other nicks, chips and tears, old tape repairs on verso but remaining very good. Housed in a burgundy quarter morocco solander box, spine lettered in gilt and decorated with a lion centre tool. Cohen A91.1.b; Woods A37(a).

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