Step by Step

London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1939. First edition, first printing. Hardcover. This is a compellingly well-preserved jacketed British first edition, first printing of an important Churchill title - his last book published before the outbreak of the Second World War. This copy – the best we have offered - is unusually bright and clean, truly fine in a very good plus dust jacket. The green cloth binding is immaculate, perfectly tight, and entirely unfaded with vivid spine gilt, sharp corners, and no apparent shelf wear. The contents are crisp, bright, and tight. We find no previous ownership marks. Differential toning to the endpapers corresponding to the dust jacket flaps confirms what the binding already testifies – that this copy has spent life jacketed. Truly negligible spotting is confined to the endpapers. Even the fore and bottom edges are strikingly clean, the only sign of age is a trivial hint of shelf dust to the top edges. The dust jacket is nearly as impressive, unclipped, retaining the original front flap price, and entirely complete. We note modest shelf wear to extremities, very light overall soiling, and just a hint of toning to the nonetheless-still-bright jacket spine. The dust jacket is protected beneath a removable, clear, archival cover. The volume is housed in a full navy Morocco goatskin Solander with rounded spine.

Step By Step includes 82 newspaper articles focused on foreign affairs written by Churchill between March 1936 and May 1939 at the end of his "wilderness years". Many of them, of course, contain his warnings and predictions about Nazi Germany. Step By Step was published in June 1939. Only a few short months later, on the first day of September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Churchill had spent the better part of a decade politically isolated, frequently at odds with both his party and prevailing public sentiment. Now he was invited to join the War Cabinet, reprising his First World War role as First Lord of the Admiralty.

Less than a year after Step By Step was published, in May 1940, Churchill became Prime Minister. As a measure of Churchill's prescience and ultimate vindication, when Step by Step was published Labour leader Clement Attlee, a political opponent who would replace Churchill as Prime Minister in late July 1945, wrote to Churchill, "It must be a melancholy satisfaction to you to see how right you were." Others were even more blunt. Sir Desmond Morton, military officer, government official, and appeasement opponent, wrote to Churchill, "Many years on, historians will read this and your speeches in Arms and the Covenant. They will wonder but I doubt they will decide what devil of pride, unbelief, selfishness or sheer madness possessed the English people that they did not rise as one man" and "call on you to lead them."

Reference: Cohen A111.1.a, Woods/ICS A45(a.1), Langworth p.197.