The River War by Winston S. Churchill - 1902

London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902. Second (first one-volume) edition. Hardcover. This is the first one-volume edition of Churchill's second book, The River War, originally published as a two-volume edition in 1899. In 1902 Churchill (by then a new member of Parliament) revised and abridged his text, adding a new Preface and excising much of the criticism of Kitchener for political reasons. For the next 120 years, every one of the many subsequent editions of The River War was based on this 1902 text. This first one-volume edition had only a single printing of 1,003 copies and is considerably scarcer than the first edition. This edition has the same distinctive gilt decoration of the Mahdi's Tomb and gunboat as the first edition, but is bound in red cloth (as opposed to the navy cloth of the first edition).

While the original and unrestored binding of this copy is failing, it is noteworthy for relatively clean contents and for being an early issue. Two features distinguish this copy as likely an early binding of the edition. First is the presence of original black endpapers (instead of white). Second is presence of the publisher's catalogue. Cohen (Vol. I, A2.2, p.46) notes "Sales were gradual" and "by 1 June 1908... 407 copies remained on hand" of which 350 were as-yet unbound sheets. Moreover, among the copies we have examined the publisher's red cloth varies quite considerably in hue, from a deep red to distinctly lighter shades. In our experience, darker cloth has corresponded to black endpapers and a bound-in publisher's catalogue. This copy - featuring darker red cloth, black endpapers, and the publisher's catalogue - seems almost certainly among the earlier copies bound and sold by the publisher.

Overall condition is only fair due to the fact that the original, illustrated, dark red cloth binding is shaken, still holding to the text block but with a split to the binding cloth spanning most of the front joint, a split starting at the upper rear joint, fraying at the spine ends, general scuffing to the spine, and light wear to the board extremities, including a little mottling at the lower front cover corner. The contents are modestly age-toned, but otherwise quite clean. Trivial spotting appears confined to the prelims and page edges, with the top edges also showing shelf dust. The only previous owner name is inked on the recto of the blank preceding the half title. There are gutter splits between the front free endpaper and following blank and at the rear pastedown, and the binding is shaken, but the mull remains intact and the text block remains anchored to the binding.

In 1883, Mahdist forces of messianic leader Mohammed Ahmed forced British withdrawal from the Sudan. In 1885, General Gordon famously lost his life in a doomed defense of Khartoum, where he had been sent to lead evacuation of British-led Egyptian forces. Though the Mahdi died that same year, his theocracy continued until 1898, when General Kitchener reoccupied the Sudan. With Kitchener was a young Winston Churchill, who participated in decisive defeat of the Mahdist forces and the last "genuine" cavalry charge of the British army during the battle of Omdurman in September 1898.

Writing about the British campaign in the Sudan, Churchill - a young officer in a colonial British army - is unusually sympathetic to the Mahdist forces and critical of Imperial cynicism and cruelty. This work offers us the candid perspective of the future 20th century icon from the distinctly 19th century battlefields where Churchill learned to write and earned his early fame.

Reference: Cohen A2.2, Woods/ICS A2(b), Langworth p.30.