This is a jacketed British first edition, first printing, of the second volume of Winston Churchill's monumental history of The First World War. In this volume Churchill provides his perspective on the disastrous Dardanelles offensive, which devolved to slaughter at Gallipoli and nearly ended Churchill’s career. 

A quarter of a century before the Second World War endowed him with lasting fame, Winston Churchill played a uniquely critical, controversial, and varied role in the “War to end all wars”. Then, being Churchill, he wrote about it. The World Crisis was originally published in six volumes between 1923 and 1931, with the first four volumes spanning the war years 1911-1918 and the final two volumes covering the postwar years 1918-1928 (The Aftermath) and the Eastern theatre (The Eastern Front). Many consider the British first editions, which feature larger volumes and shoulder notes summarizing the subject of each page, aesthetically superior to their U.S. counterparts. Unfortunately, the smooth navy cloth of the British first editions proved quite susceptible to wear, and the contents prone to spotting and toning. The dust jackets rarely survive and dramatically increase collector appeal and value when they do. 

This first printing of the 1915 volume is very good in a very good minus dust jacket. The blue cloth binding is strikingly clean and bright, owing to the lifelong protection of the accompanying dust jacket. The binding remains tight and sharp cornered, with only light shelf wear to extremities, wrinkling at the spine ends, and a few tiny blemishes. The contents are quite respectably clean, with no previous ownership marks. Differential toning to the endpapers corresponds to the dust jacket flaps, confirming that this copy has spent life jacketed. Age-toning is mild, readily apparent only to the text block edges. The chief defect of this copy – endemic to first editions – is spotting, heavier to the first and final leaves and page edges, only occasionally intruding into the blank inner margins throughout the balance of the text. The dust jacket shows a shallow, irregular strip loss to a maximum depth of .5 inch at the spine head, a roughly .25 x .375 hole near the center of the rear joint, and lesser, fractional loss to the spine heel and corners. The spine is toned and scuffed, the faces comparatively bright and only lightly soiled. The dust jacket is protected beneath a removable, clear, archival cover.

In October 1911, aged 36, Winston Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. He entered the post with the brief to change war strategy and ensure the readiness of the world’s most powerful navy. He did both. Even Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener, with whom Churchill had been variously at odds for nearly two decades, told Churchill on his final day as First Lord “Well, there is one thing at any rate they cannot take from you. The Fleet was ready." (The World Crisis: 1915, p.391) Nonetheless, when Churchill advocated successfully for a naval campaign in the Dardanelles that ultimately proved disastrous, he was scapegoated and forced to resign, leaving the Admiralty in May 1915. Churchill’s wife, Clementine, later recalled to Churchill’s official biographer “I thought he would never get over the Dardanelles; I thought he would die of grief.” (Gilbert, Vol. III, p.473)

By November, Churchill resigned even his nominal Cabinet posts to spend the rest of his political exile as a lieutenant colonel leading a battalion in the trenches at the Front. Before war's end, Churchill was exonerated by the Dardanelles Commission and rejoined the Government, foreshadowing the political isolation and restoration he would experience two decades later leading up to the Second World War. Despite Churchill's political recovery, the stigma of the Dardanelles lingered. Hence Churchill had more than just literary and financial compulsion to write his history.

Reference: Cohen A69.2(II).a, Woods/ICS A31(ab), Langworth p.105.

Ref #: 008275

 

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