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CHURCHILL, Winston L[eonard]. Spencer.
The Story of the Malakand Field Force
An Episode of Frontier War. New Impression.
Publisher: London, New York and Bombay, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1901
Stock code: 47384
Price: £250 Currency Conversion
Second printing of the Silver Library Edition of Churchill's first book, "with considerable alterations in make-up and binding", based on his exploits with the Malakand field force lend by Sir Bindon Blood on the north-west frontier of India in 1897, which Churchill accompanied as a war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. As he was still in India, the checking of the proofs was undertaken "by an uncle of mine, a very brilliant man and himself a ready writer. For some reason or other he missed many scores of misprints and made no attempt to organise the punctuation." This led to a some fairly severe comments, these however mixed with compliments: "The Athenæum said 'Pages of Napier punctuated by a mad printer's reader" (My Early Life). One reader unstinting in his praise was the prime minister, Lord Salisbury, who called Churchill for a personal interview and expressed his "admiration not only for its matter but for its style" and thought it a "truer picture" of events than any other documents he had read. The reception of Malakand was key in convincing Churchill that he could live by the pen, as well as by the sword.
Small octavo, original reddish cloth, title and publisher's device gilt to the spine, single ruled panel in blind to the boards, patterned endpapers. Portrait frontispiece of Sir Bindon Blood and 6 folding colour maps. Ex-Otago Military District and North Otago Officers' Club library with stamps and shelf-marks to the endpapers, rubbed and sunned, particularly at the spine, contents lightly toned.
