My Early Life
Winston S. Churchill
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1944. Hardcover.
Hardcover Rare
Published by Macmillan, 1944
is an uncommonly bright and clean example of the fourth and final wartime reprint of Churchill's extremely popular autobiography, covering the years from his birth in 1874 to his first few years in Parliament. This book was originally published by Thornton Butterworth in 1930. Macmillan acquired the rights to several Churchill books after Thornton Butterworth went under in 1940. During Churchills wartime premiership these desirable reprints (issued from first edition plates) were published by Macmillan, bound in dark blue cloth and wrapped in attractive tan dust jackets. There were ultimately four Macmillan printings of My Early Life between 1941 and 1944. The fourth printing was the final edition of his autobiography produced before the end of his wartime premiership.
My Early Life covers the years from Churchill s birth in 1874 to his first few years in Parliament. One can hardly ask for more adventurous content. These momentous and formative years for Churchill included his time as an itinerant war correspondent and cavalry officer in theaters ranging from Cuba, to northwest India, to sub-Saharan and southern Africa. Churchill also recounts his capture and escape during the Boer War, which made him a celebrity and helped launch his political career.Herein Churchill says: "Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Don't be content with things as they are as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. (p.60) By the end of his own twenty-fifth year, Churchill had been one of the world s highest paid war correspondents, published five books, made his first lecture tour of North America, braved and breasted both battlefields and the hustings, and been elected to Parliament, where he would take his first seat only weeks after the end of Queen Victoria s reign.My Early Life remains one of the most popular and widely read of all Churchill's books. An original 1930 review likened it to a "beaker of Champagne." That effervescent charm endures; a more recent writer called it "a racy, humorous, self-deprecating classic of autobiography." To be sure, Churchill takes some liberties with facts and perhaps unduly lightens or over-simplifies certain events. Nonetheless, the factual experiences of Churchill s early life compete with any fiction, and any liberties taken are eminently forgivable, in keeping with the wit, pace, and engaging style that characterizes the book
