Octavo. Original green cloth, gilt-lettered spine, blind rules extending over spine and front board, front board with publisher’s device in blind. With the dust jacket. Housed in a custom green morocco solander box. First edition, first impression, an unusually bright copy of Churchill’s final book before the outbreak of the Second World War, and the last published by Thornton Butterworth, who went into liquidation shortly after.
Churchill’s weekly commentaries arguing against appeasement were first published in the Evening Standard and subsequently syndicated throughout Europe. On receiving his own copy from Churchill, Clement Atlee wrote, “It must be a melancholy satisfaction to you to see how right you were” (cited after Cohen). Cohen states that Step By Step was published in an edition of 7,500 copies on 27 June, just over two months before the declaration of war. The condition of most copies encountered suggests that the book was read avidly, a fate which this copy appears to have been entirely spared.
