Churchill, Sir Winston

Estimate

5,000 - 7,000 USD

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Description

Churchill, Sir Winston
My African Journey. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908
ink, paper

8vo. Half-title, frontispiece, 61 illustrations and three maps (one folding). 18 pp. publisher's advertisements at end; spotting throughout. Publisher's blue and red pictorial cloth, light wear to extremities, spine gilt, slightly faded. In a quarter-morocco clamshell box.

Literature

Woods A12

Catalogue Note

First edition of this early Churchill travelogue, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper and dated 1 December 1908. As Undersecretary of State for the Colonies in 1907, Churchill traveled to Africa on a two-month tour of inspection. The publication of this book, and Churchill's return to Britain, marked a new chapter in his personal and professional life: in April 1908 the new Prime Minister H.H. Asquith brought Churchill, aged 33, into the Cabinet as president of the Board of Trade.

The only book in the Churchill literary canon that contains photographs taken by the future Prime Minister, one of which — a dramatic hunting scene featuring Churchill standing over a dead rhinoceros — is the basis for the design of the pictorial cloth binding.