While England Slept by Winston S. Churchill - 1938

New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1938. U.S. first edition, first printing. Hardcover. This is the precursor to Churchill's great war speeches, the U.S. first edition, first printing in the first printing dust jacket, published 11 months before the outbreak of the Second World War.

The U.S. first edition is a handsome book, a substantial 9.5 x 6.375 inches (25.13 x 16.19 cm) bound in blue cloth with red banners on the front cover and spine lettered in silver and red topstain. This is a lovely, near fine plus copy in a good plus dust jacket. The blue cloth binding remains beautifully square, clean, bright, and tight with sharp corners. Trivial hints of shelf wear to extremities, including minor wrinkling of the spine ends, are the only exterior flaws to report. The contents are equally impressive, immaculately clean with no spotting or previous ownership marks. Even the untrimmed fore edges are perfectly clean and the red-stained top edge retains uniformly bright color. If not for mild age-toning, the contents would be as new. The distinctive red, white, and black dust jacket is unclipped, retaining the original $4.00 front flap price, and impressively unfaded, with no color shift between the deep red hue on both the front face and spine. The jacket is also clean, with minimal soiling to the white rear face and flaps. Nonetheless, there is wear and minor loss. We note general wear to extremities, with further scuffing to the spine, hinges, and flap folds. There is fractional chip loss to the upper spine, loss to a maximum depth of .375 inch (.95 cm) at the spine heel, and small losses to the bottom edge of the rear face and flap fold extremities. The dust jacket is newly fitted with a clear, removable, archival cover.

While England Slept contains text from 41 Churchill speeches criticizing British foreign policy, spanning 25 October 1928 to 24 March 1938. This collection has been called "the permanent record of one mans unceasing struggle in the face of resentment, apathy, and complacency. The speeches were compiled by Churchill's son, Randolph, who contributed a preface and is credited with compilation. Randolph would do the same for his father's first volume of war speeches, Into Battle, published in an almost unrecognizable world less than three years later.

At the time, on the eve of the Second World War, the British edition was given the politically palatable title Arms and the Covenant referencing the failed Covenant of the post-WWI League of Nations. The U.S. title While England Slept - is more candid.

The world remembers the resolute war leader to whom the British entrusted their fate, but it is easy to forget the years leading up to the war, which Churchill spent persistent, eloquent, and largely unheeded. Churchill bibliographer Frederick Woods called this edition "probably the most crucial volume of speeches that he ever published". As testimony to the book's importance, a copy of While England Slept lay on "President Roosevelt's bedside table, with key passages, including an analysis of the president's peace initiative, underscored." (William Manchester, The Last Lion, Volume II, p.305)

Bibliographic reference: Cohen A107.2.a, Woods/ICS A44(b.1). Langworth p.193.