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Lot 46
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Winston Churchill, edited proof & signed archive for his book, Marlborough: His Life and Times
Winston Churchill, edited proof & signed archive for his book, Marlborough: His Life and Times
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Description:

Churchill Winston

Winston Churchill archive inclusive of his personally annotated proof for his book, Marlborough: His Life and Times, and typed signed letter.

 

Archive of three pieces:

  1. Single page TLS, 8" x 10" on stationary stock with letterhead address of Chartwell, Westerham, Kent. Dated "9th January, 1935" and signed by Winston Churchill as "yours …/ Winston Churchill." Typed on recto with verso blank. Expected folds else near fine. Two page typed letter, 8" x 10", on stationary stock of Chartwell Westerham Kent letterhead. Dated "18th August 1934."
  1. Two page typed letter, 8" x 10," on stationary stock of Chartwell Westerham Kent letterhead. Dated "18th August 1934." Both pages are glued together along upper left corner. Addressed to Mr. Wood and notes he is sending him annotated proofs. Pages soiled and stained.
  2. Annotated proof, 10" x 14," of page 241, with top edge of "Marlborough-II  Slip 241D." Sentences crossed out in blue pencil, marked up in red pencil, and with 22 words annotated in graphite entirely in the hand of Winston Churchill off to the right margin. Paper clip stain, expected folds, light soiling. Archival repair to a separation along fold neatly executed to verso.

 

Winston Churchill writes to C.C. Wood, chief copy editor at George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, relating to the publication of his monumental biography; Marlborough: His Life and Times, published in four parts and published 1933-1938. This exceptionally rare letter signed by Churchill is accompanied by a scarce single page annotated proof of which only 2 such examples in the last 18 years have even come to market, each selling for in excess of $6,000-$10,000 per annotated page!

 

His signed letter to C.C. Wood is shown below:

 

"Dear Mr. Wood,

I am not expecting to publish Volume III of Marlborough till the spring of 1936, as there is so much political distraction at the present time.

Yours …

Winston Churchill"

 

The accompanying revealing typed letter of this archive notes Churchill sending Mr. Wood the annotated proof for page 241 of his biography "I now send you page 241 to 336 for proofs when the few outstanding points have been settled. I have noted the only ones …" The annotations made in Churchill's hand on the proof for page 241  include in part, "in this history of the Fall of the House of Stuart has bequeathed us a monumental work," and "Imperial commander Prince Louis … "

 

The TLS, written just about the time the Nazi region came in power, but several years before the advent of WWII and becoming Prime Minister, Winston Churchill tasked himself to write the biography of Marlborough, John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, who started his court service as a page during the reign of Charles II and ended it as Master-General of the Ordnance of the English army under George I. He served under five sovereigns, distinguished himself on the battlefield and as a diplomat, and was once even imprisoned in the Tower of London for treason. Handsome and charming— Lord Chesterfield described him as “irresistible to either man or woman”— Marlborough’s military strategy led the Duke of Wellington to say that he could “conceive nothing greater than Marlborough at the head of an English army.” Future prime minister Winston Churchill, who was named after Marlborough’s father and was the nephew of the Eighth Duke of Marlborough, wrote this history of his famous ancestor to refute earlier criticisms of Marlborough by the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. “Though it was a commissioned work, Churchill would not have invested nearly a million words and ten years had it not had special significance for him. For he wrote about a man who was not only his ancestor, an invincible general, the first of what became the Spencer-Churchill dukes of Marlborough, and a maker of modern Britain, but also a supreme example of heroism in the two vocations which mainly interested Churchill and in which ultimate triumph seemed to have eluded him— politics and war making” (Wiedhorn, 110). “It may be his greatest book. To understand the Churchill of the Second World War, the majestic blending of his commanding English with historical precedent, one has to read Marlborough. Only in its pages can one glean an understanding of the root of the speeches which inspired Britain to stand when she had little to stand with” (Langworth, 164). “The scholarship seems formidable, as in no other of his works. Picking his way through conflicting testimony and evaluations, Churchill, while leaning on William Coxe’s 1818 biography of the duke, carefully weighs each writer’s reliability. Yet the tone is not as detached as might be expected from an academic historian… Marlborough, with his broad European view and his apparent sense of Britain’s imperial destiny, is the fulcrum, and all the other characters, parties, and issues take their places accordingly… the literati hostile to Marlborough— Pope, Swift, Thackeray, Macaulay— are harshly expelled from the witness stand” (Wiedhorn, 113-114).

 

Winston Churchill is one of the best-known, and some say one of the greatest, statesmen of the 20th century. Though he was born into a life of privilege, he dedicated himself to public service. His legacy is a complicated one–he was an idealist and a pragmatist; an orator and a soldier; an advocate of progressive social reforms and an unapologetic elitist; a defender of democracy as well as of Britain’s fading empire–but for many people in Great Britain and elsewhere, Winston Churchill is simply a hero.


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