Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

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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
of a jacket, at least on the English firstedition.In my view the most attractiveedition of My African Journey wasHodder & Stoughton’s March 1910publication of the work in its SixpennyNovels list. Reset in two columns, thefront cover of this extremely fragileedition is striking. Of the 20,009 copiesprinted, 16,365 had been sold domesticallyand 3644 shipped for export by theend of the company’s 1916-17 fiscalyear. I am unaware of any feature distinguishingexport from domestic copies.While the newsprint-quality paper andthin wrappers (0.18 mm, half the thicknessof the 0.36 mm Colonial cardwrappers) rendered these copies muchmore perishable than the card-wrappersColonials, more than twenty times asmany were printed and—as would beexpected—many more of the 1910“paperback” survived. They remainuncommon and quite scarce in nearperfectcondition.It was more than half a centurybefore My African Journey was againpublicly available. In November 1962,Neville Spearman and the Holland Pressrepublished it in London, and then onChurchill’s 80th birthday, Icon Bookspublished the first modern paperbackedition of the work. Heron Books thenrepublished the volume in Geneva, possiblyin 1965. Additional appearancesSPINE IMPRINTS: The First English edition (and all three American sub-issues)carried Hodder & Stoughton imprints, above left; copies for the export marketwere designated by an asterisk (A27.2 cased, above right, A27.3 card wrapperversion, below left); the Briggs Canadian issue (A27.7) carried its own imprint.over the next twenty-five years were theNew English Library (London, 1972);Leo Cooper (London, 1989); Norton(New York, 1990); Mandarin Books(paperback, London, 1990); and, last ofall, Easton Press (leatherbound,Norwalk, Connecticut, 1992).My African Journey is uniqueamong Churchill works: his only travelbook, probably the most colorfullybound among first editions, and a textthat offers a glimpse of East Africa asyoung Winston saw it. ,Print RunsA27.1-7 First edition, only printing(1908). Total print run, 12,500, distributedas follows:UK cased (cloth-bound): 8,161Colonial cased: 1,726Canadian cased: 250 (estimate)Colonial card-wrapped: 903USA cased (3 states): 1,400Unaccounted for: 60A27.8 Second (paper wrappers) edition,only printing (1910). Total run: 20,009.MYTHS, from page 53...Petacco’s only published Mussoliniletter, 18 May 1940, is a handwrittendraft of the words in his official letter toChurchill, who dated it the 16th, possiblyin error, in Their Finest Hour.Serious Italian historians andcourts concluded long ago that theChurchill “letters” to Mussolini aretransparent frauds. Churchill admittedin Their Finest Hour that he had onceexpressed admiration for the Duce,whom he first considered a bulwarkagainst Bolshevism. Obviously, however,the admiration came to an end whenMussolini allied Italy with NaziGermany. The Prime Minister whowould have “no truce or parley” withHitler and his “grizzly gang” wouldnever have parleyed with the man hereferred to as Hitler’s “Italian jackal.” ,FINEST HOUR 149 / 57WSC paintsnear VillaRosa, LakeComo: theactual photoin Grant’sIllustratedBiography.WHAT CHURCHILL REALLY WROTE:Prime Minister to Signor Mussolini 16.V.40Now that I have taken up my office asPrime Minister and Minister of Defence Ilook back to our meetings in Rome and feela desire to speak words of goodwill to you asChief of the Italian nation across what seemsto be a swiftly-widening gulf. Is it too late tostop a river of blood from flowing betweenthe British and Italian peoples? We can nodoubt inflict grievous injuries upon oneanother and maul each other cruelly, anddarken the Mediterranean with our strife. Ifyou so decree, it must be so; but I declarethat I have never been the enemy of Italiangreatness, nor ever at heart the foe of theItalian lawgiver. It is idle to predict thecourse of the great battles now raging inEurope, but I am sure that whatever mayhappen on the Continent England will go onto the end, even quite alone, as we have donebefore, and I believe with some assurancethat we shall be aided in increasing measureby the United States, and, indeed, by all theAmericas.“I beg you to believe that it is in nospirit of weakness or of fear that I make thissolemn appeal, which will remain on record.Down the ages above all other calls comesthe cry that the joint heirs of Latin andChristian civilisation must not be rangedagainst one another in mortal strife. Hearkento it, I beseech you in all honour and respect,before the dread signal is given. It will neverbe given by us.” , >>
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THE JOURNAL OF WINSTON CHURCHILLWIN
Page 6: T H E M E O F T H E I S S U EThe Va
Page 9 and 10: History, Bob Pettengill, CB 17.Chur
Page 11 and 12: Painted Lady: A North Africanvisito
Page 13 and 14: world. I recognised Hillgarth’s n
Page 15 and 16: They Owed Churchill—and He Owed M
Page 18 and 19: “Churchill exploited intelligence
Page 20 and 21: C H U R C H I L L A N D I N T E L L
Page 22 and 23: GOLDEN EGGS...When he was in Britai
Page 24 and 25: GOLDEN EGGS...attack across the Wes
Page 26 and 27: GOLDEN EGGS...called “American Wa
Page 29 and 30: MedmenhamIn July 1943 I was posted
Page 33 and 34: The SIGSALY SystemTo operate this c
Page 37: W I T A N D W I S D O M“Unsinkabl
Page 40 and 41: C O V E R S T O R YWhen the Twain M
Page 42 and 43: WHEN THE TWAIN MET...“I was thril
Page 44 and 45: Twain aged 72, in the robes of Oxfo
Page 46 and 47: ,E D U C A T I O NJames Muller's pa
Page 48 and 49: E D U C A T I O NBelow: We enjoyed
Page 50 and 51: Books, Arts& CuriositiesChurchill C
Page 52 and 53: R E V I E W S“A1” RETURNS...Eas
Page 54 and 55: C O H E N C O R N E R“Uganda Is D
Page 58 and 59: R E V I E W SThe Least of the Lot
Page 60 and 61: FIFTY YEARS HENCE...As a writer, Ch
Page 62 and 63: Churchill QuizJAMES LANCASTEREach q
Page 64: Alan Turing OBE FRS (1912-1954): He
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Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

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