Description
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples – In Four Volumes – With Signed Compliments Slip From Sir Winston Churchill
London Cassell and Company 1956-8
First editions, first impressions. Four volumes. With an original autograph presentation slip on Churchill’s Knightsbridge headed paper, inscribed and signed by Winston S. Churchill, tipped into Volume I.
A complete set of Churchill’s monumental history of Britain and the English-speaking world, comprising: Volume I – ‘The Birth of Britain’, 1956; Volume II – ‘The New World’, 1956; Volume III – ‘The Age of Revolution’, 1957; Volume IV – ‘The Great Democracies’, 1958.
Four volumes, octavo, uniformly bound in the publisher’s original red cloth with gilt titles to the spines, complete with maps and plans throughout, in the original pictorial dust wrappers with some light edgewear to volume one.
Tipped into Volume I is an original presentation slip on Churchill’s personal Knightsbridge headed stationery, inscribed in his hand “With all good wishes” and boldly signed “Winston S. Churchill”.
A particularly attractive example of Churchill’s autograph, the use of his personal headed stationery giving the presentation considerably greater visual and historical appeal than a simple clipped signature.
Churchill conceived ‘A History of the English-Speaking Peoples’ during the 1930s and had substantially begun the work before the outbreak of the Second World War. The demands of wartime leadership and his subsequent political career delayed its completion for almost two decades, and the work was finally published by Cassell in four volumes between 1956 and 1958.
The history begins with Julius Caesar’s invasions of Britain and follows the development of British political institutions, society and empire through the medieval and Tudor periods, the English Civil War and Revolution, the emergence of parliamentary government, the growth of the British Empire and the development of the United States, concluding at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Published after Churchill’s final premiership and when he was already in his eighties, ‘A History of the English-Speaking Peoples’ represents his last great historical undertaking and the culmination of a lifetime spent both studying and participating in history. Its sweeping narrative, character portraits and distinctly Churchillian interpretation of the development of parliamentary liberty make it one of the most characteristic works in his extensive literary canon.
Churchill had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953, recognised for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as his celebrated oratory.
A very good set in very good original dust wrappers, considerably enhanced by the original Churchill autograph presentation slip tipped into the first volume.
