Lord Randolph Churchill.

CHURCHILL, Winston S.

$8,200.00

Item Number: 144651

New York and London: Macmillan & Co. Limited, 1906.

First editions of Winston S. Churchill‘s impassioned two-volume biography written in defence of his maligned father’s posthumous reputation; a bulwark of any Churchill collection. Octavo, 2 volumes bound in three quarters morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe with gilt titles and five raised bands to the spine, top edge gilt, engraved frontispiece portrait of Sir Randolph Churchill after a photograph by Mackintosh to Volume I, engraved frontispiece portrait of Sir Randolph Churchill after a photograph by Russell and Sons to Volume II, illustrated. Signed by the author on the first blank of Vol. I, “Inscribed by Winston S. Churchill 1907.” In very good condition.

“Outside Parliament, Churchill devoted much of his time during 1904 and 1905 to compiling a biography of Lord Randolph. He was motivated in part by a desire for an intimate knowledge of his father that had been denied him during Lord Randolph’s lifetime… When the book emerged in 1906, it was widely hailed as one of the best political biographies in English and its prose style is still greatly admired today… Contemporary readers were struck by the frankness and openness of the account, contrasting favorably with the pious acts of homage served up as biography by other sons of famous fathers. It was, after all, a study in failure rather than success. The writing of the biography marked the point at which Churchill at last outgrew his father’s memory” (Grant, 47).