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Description: First edition, first impression, pre-publication presentation copy from the publisher, inscribed on the front free endpaper, "To my friend Charles Havell from his friend Thornton Butterworth 14-10-30". The book was published six days later on 20 October. 14 October is the earliest date for which inscribed copies are known. It is the same date that Churchill inscribed a copy to Neville Chamberlain (noted by Cohen) and to Lloyd George and Stanley Baldwin (both handled by us). Curiously, the only other copy inscribed by Butterworth which we could trace was inscribed on publication day (20 October) to his literary agent Curtis Brown (sold at Sotheby's, 2002). The recipient of this copy could not be firmly traced, but is possibly Cedric Charles Walter Havell (1895-1979), awarded the Military Cross in 1915, and afterwards a director of the Imperial Tobacco Company. Thornton Butterworth was Churchill's publisher from 1919 to 1939, and aside from My Early Life also published Churchill's The World Crisis, India, Thoughts and Adventures, Great Contemporaries, and Step by Step. My Early Life is Churchill's only volume of sustained autobiography, covering his formative years from his birth in 1874 until his election as MP for Oldham in 1900 - a "witty and elegiac account of his youth shot through with regret at the decline of the social and imperial order in which he had grown up" (ODNB). Among his most widely read works, it provides a highly entertaining account of his childhood, schooldays at Harrow, military training at Sandhurst, experiences as a war correspondent in Cuba, and service attached to the Malakand Field Force on the North-West Frontier of India, charging with the 21st Lancers at Omdurman, and as a POW in South Africa during the Boer War. This copy has the second state half-title (the first state omitted the first volume of The World Crisis from the list of Churchill's works, which the second state instates). However, it is in the first binding state with the front cover stamped in 3, rather than 5, lines. This is unusual - Cohen had not seen such a copy and speculated "perhaps even all copies of the second state will be found in binding cases in which the front cover is stamped in 5 lines". However, he recognized that "since the printing and cancelling events did not parallel the binding event, it may be expected that some second state copies will be found in the earlier cases and some first-state copies will be found in the later cases, particularly since both states were available prior to the initial publication date". Such states are certainly not indicative (as evidenced by the inscription) of any priority. Cohen A91.1.c; Woods A37(a). Octavo. Original pink cloth, spine lettered in gilt, front cover lettered in gilt in three lines, publisher's device and broad single rules to covers in blind, bottom edge untrimmed. With folding map and 16 plates. Spine sunned, inner hinges tender, lightly spotted, newspaper clipping offset to pp. 62-3: a good copy.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom