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Details
CHURCHILL, Winston S. Great Contemporaries. London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1937.
8o. Photographic plates. (Some light foxing.) Original blue cloth, gilt-lettered on front cover and spine (some light dampstaining and soiling, spine lightly sunned). Provenance: Leonie Jerome Leslie, Churchill's aunt (presentation inscription).
FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING. A FINE FAMILY ASSOCIATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY CHURCHILL TO HIS FAVORITE AUNT on the half-title: "To Leonie from Winston October 1937 With all my love." 5,000 copies were printed on 4 October 1937; by year's end another 10,000 copies were issued.
Leonie Jerome Leslie was the youngest of the three Jerome sisters, with Churchill's mother Jennie being the oldest. Churchill maintained lifelong relations with his favorite aunt, growing especially close to her after his mother's death in 1921. She was almost 78 when presented with this book, and she lived until 1943, long enough to witness her nephew's ascension to the Prime Ministership.
Churchill composed these brief lives over eight years, starting with a sketch of Henry Asquith in 1928. Prior to publication, he circulated the individual essays to readers with particular knowledge of the subject. Despite the concerns of Cliff Norton at the Foreign Office, Churchill went ahead with his profile of Hitler, though he did take some of the "sting out of the article" that had appeared originally in Strand magazine.
Churchill presentation copies with intimate family inscriptions are rare, and it is interesting to note that the copy of Great Contemporaries inscribed to his daughter Sarah and son-in-law Vic Oliver was a second impression (sold Sotheby's London, 17 December 1998, lot 174). That copy also bore a much less effusive inscription: "To Sarah & Vic from Winston S. Churchill October 1937." Woods A43a.
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FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING. A FINE FAMILY ASSOCIATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY CHURCHILL TO HIS FAVORITE AUNT on the half-title: "To Leonie from Winston October 1937 With all my love." 5,000 copies were printed on 4 October 1937; by year's end another 10,000 copies were issued.
Leonie Jerome Leslie was the youngest of the three Jerome sisters, with Churchill's mother Jennie being the oldest. Churchill maintained lifelong relations with his favorite aunt, growing especially close to her after his mother's death in 1921. She was almost 78 when presented with this book, and she lived until 1943, long enough to witness her nephew's ascension to the Prime Ministership.
Churchill composed these brief lives over eight years, starting with a sketch of Henry Asquith in 1928. Prior to publication, he circulated the individual essays to readers with particular knowledge of the subject. Despite the concerns of Cliff Norton at the Foreign Office, Churchill went ahead with his profile of Hitler, though he did take some of the "sting out of the article" that had appeared originally in Strand magazine.
Churchill presentation copies with intimate family inscriptions are rare, and it is interesting to note that the copy of Great Contemporaries inscribed to his daughter Sarah and son-in-law Vic Oliver was a second impression (sold Sotheby's London, 17 December 1998, lot 174). That copy also bore a much less effusive inscription: "To Sarah & Vic from Winston S. Churchill October 1937." Woods A43a.