Marlborough: His Life and Times, Volume II, "Limited Presentation Edition"

London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., 1939. Limited Presentation Edition. Hardcover. This is Volume II of the "Limited Presentation Edition" of 1939. During the four years covered by Volume II (1702-1705), Marlborough led England as Captain-General. The volume is a substantial 651 pages with 31 illustrations, 76 maps and plans, and 3 document facsimiles.

Winston Churchill's monumental biography of his great ancestor, John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, was initially published in Britain in four volumes between 1933 and 1938. After the fourth and final volume of Marlborough was published, in December 1939 the publisher, Harrap, issued what it called a "Limited Presentation Edition" with distinctive bindings and dust jackets unique to the edition. The bindings are medium purple cloth with silver spine lettering and the dust jackets printed in black and orange on cream paper. For Volume I, there was a 1939 printing unique to this edition. For Volume II, the publisher used sheets from the first edition, second and final printing. For volumes III & IV, the publisher used sheets from the first edition, only printing. The Limited Presentation Edition bindings proved even more prone to sunning than their first edition counterparts, often toning significantly even beneath the thin dust jackets, which themselves proved quite fragile and equally subject to sunning.

This copy of Volume II is very good in a good plus dust jacket. The purple cloth binding is square, tight, and clean, only slightly faded on the spine except for a small strip at the spine head corresponding to a dust jacket loss. The "II" from the dust jacket, which was heavily printed and thus offered more protection from sunning, shows on the binding spine as two darker spots. There are minor bumps to the upper corners. The contents are crisp and bright with modest spotting confined to page edges and endpapers. Differential toning to the endpapers corresponds to the dust jacket flaps. The dust jacket is unclipped with a mildly toned spine, loss at the spine head to a .25 inch depth, minor loss at the lower front corner, and moderate overall soiling. The dust jacket is protected beneath a removable, clear, archival protector.

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: A97.5, Woods/ICS A40(ad), Langworth p.172