Marlborough: His Life and Times, Volumes I & II in the first printing, first state dust jackets

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933. First edition, first printing. Hardcover. This is a U.S. first edition set of the first two volumes of Winston Churchill’s Marlborough in the first state dust jackets. The British first edition of Churchill’s biography of his great ancestor, John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, was issued in four volumes. The U.S. publisher chose to split the first two volumes into two books each, resulting in a six-volume set that is otherwise identical in content to the British. These first four U.S. volumes were originally issued in two-volume sets, with cream-colored dust jackets featuring green print. Only in 1938, when the sixth and final U.S. volume was published, were the more commonly seen blue and gold dust jackets issued. Today the first state dust jackets are scarcer than their blue and gold counterparts.

Here are fine copies of the first two volumes in nearly very good, first state dust jackets. The green cloth bindings are beautifully clean, tight, and square with bright spine gilt, sharp corners, and virtually no wear. The contents of each volume are bright and clean. We find no previous ownership marks and no spotting. Even the untrimmed fore edges remain clean and bright. The dust jackets show the customary transfer browning to the Volume II front panel and Volume I rear panel caused by the original cardboard publisher’s slipcase (no longer present), as well as toning to the spines. Fractional loss is confined to the spine heads and the upper edge of the Volume II front panel. We note a 2 cm closed tear to the upper edge of the Volume I front panel as well as scuffing and staining to the spines. The dust jackets are protected beneath clear, removable, archival covers.

Marlborough was initially conceived a full 40 years before publication of the final volume. Churchill originally considered the idea of the biography in 1898, returning to it in earnest in 1928. Marlborough ultimately took 10 years of research and writing and is the most substantial published work of Churchill's "wilderness years" in the 1930s, which he spent politically isolated, often at odds with both his own party and prevailing public sentiment. This decade saw Churchill pass into his sixties with his own future as uncertain as that of his nation. Churchill may have wondered if the life history he was writing might ultimately eclipse his own.

Few would accuse Churchill of objectivity. Nonetheless, as a work of history it drew high praise. Upon reading the proofs, James Lewis Garvin, editor of The Observer, wrote “I think it to be… the greatest of all your works… Your full brush has never had more mastery over space and colour…” Two months after Volume I was published, on 12 December 1933, T.E. Lawrence wrote to Churchill: “I finished it only yesterday. I wish I had not… The skeleton of the book is so good. Its parts balance and the main stream flows… Marlborough has the big scene-painting, the informed pictures of men, the sober comment on political method, the humour, irony and understanding… It is history, solemn and decorative.” When Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953, it was partly for “mastery of historical and biographical description” on the strength of Marlborough, which was specifically cited and quoted by the Swedish Academy.

Reference: A97.4(I&II).a, Woods/ICS A49(ba), Langworth p.169.