Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

AFRICAN TRAVELOGUE...Churchill earned considerably more fromhis articles than had been anticipated.His agent of the day, Alexander PollockWatt, succeeded in convincing GreenhoughSmith, editor of The Strand Magazine,to pay an additional £150 each fortwo more articles. Ultimately, nine werepublished, and Churchill was paid a totalof £1050 for what had been contractedas “35,000 words of matter divided intoeight articles.” The first part was publishedin the March 1908 issue of theBritish Strand, priced at 6d., and in theApril 1908 issue of the American Strand,priced at 15¢.The book rights to My AfricanJourney were not shopped around to thepublishing trade in the way LordRandolph Churchill had been. In fact,the publisher of The Strand Magazinehad a loose first-refusal arrangementwith Hodder & Stoughton, whichagreed to an important Churchilliancondition, namely, that “the whole ofthe amount of the advance is paid to youon the delivery of the ‘copy,’ as you wishit.” The publisher did, however, requirethat Churchill provide an additional10,000 words to differentiate the bookfrom the magazine serialisation. In theend, the volume was published inDecember 1908, a month later thanHodder & Stoughton had hoped, buttimed with the appearance of the lastmonthly installment in the BritishStrand. While the Hodder & Stoughtonarchives have not yielded a copy of thepublishing contract, it is clear thatChurchill secured an advance of close to£1000 for the volume rights.Hodder & Stoughton printed12,500 copies, of which 8161 were soldor distributed gratis. The front cover wasan artist’s rendition of WSC standingover the white rhino he had bagged. Theprint run included 1976 Colonial clothcopies, which are distinguished only bythe presence of an “asterisk” below thepublisher’s name on the spine. Amongthese was the Canadian issue by WilliamBriggs, which I estimate speculatively asbeing about 250 copies. It is worthnoting that technically, Briggs was notthe Canadian publisher: that was theMethodist Book and Publishing House,of which Briggs was the Steward. But itChurchill’s wry tribute to Uganda’s wildlife on an inscribed copy.AMERICAN ISSUE: bound in plain reddish-brown cloth, above left. The first subissue(A27.4, above right) used the British title page, right; the second (A27.5, belowleft) had a modified title page cancellans showing “New York and London” as placesof issue; the third (A27.6, below right) showed George Doran as the publisher.was undeniably Briggs’s name thatappeared on the title page and spine.There were also 903 copies of thefragile card wrappers Colonial issue. Thisis without doubt the rarest edition/issueof My African Journey and one of thevery rarest of all volumes in theChurchill canon, much scarcer in myexperience than The People’s Rights(Cohen A31), For Free Trade (CohenA18) or even the second edition of Mr.Brodrick’s Army (Cohen A10.2). Aswould be expected, it is distinguished bythe presence of the asterisk below thepublisher’s imprint on the spine.Of the first run of Hodder &Stoughton sheets, 1400 copies wereshipped to the United States, where thepublisher was the Canadian-trainedGeorge H. Doran, whose offices were ina publisher-dominated building on West32nd Street in New York City (whereAppleton, Henry Holt and the OxfordUniversity Press were also located). TheAmerican publication date was 27February 1909.There were three separate subissuesof the American issue,distinguished only by the title pages.The binding was, in each case, a uniformlyuninteresting dark reddish-brownembossed calico-texture cloth. I have discoveredno information that wouldenable me to allocate quantities amongthese three issues.Collectors always set great store bydust jackets, and the assumption in theabsence of evidence is that most bookshad them, even in those years. But Ihave never seen or heard mention of ajacket for My African Journey. It may bethat the illustrated top board was in lieuFINEST HOUR 149 / 56