EXCEPTIONAL CHURCHILL PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY: FIRST EDITION OF CHURCHILL’S SCARCE MARLBOROUGH, INSCRIBED IN ALL VOLUMES, EACH IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION, TO HISTORIAN GEORGE MACAULAY TREVELYAN, DESCENDANT OF THE HISTORIAN WHO DENIGRATED MARLBOROUGH

CHURCHILL, Winston. Marlborough: His Life and Times. London: George G. Harrap, (1933-38). Four volumes. Octavo, original plum cloth over beveled boards. Housed in two custom half morocco clamshell boxes.

First trade editions, with hundreds of maps and plans (many folding), plates and document facsimiles, inscribed and dated by Churchill to George Macaulay Trevelyan in each volume. Tipped in to the front pastedown endpaper of Volume I is a typed letter signed by Churchill to Trevelyan, thanking him for the use of a letter and sending him a prepublication copy of Volume I of Marlborough.

John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, 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).

Noted historian George Macaulay Trevelyan, the great-nephew of Macaulay, was the recipient of this copy of Churchill’s work. Dated 13th September 1933, on Churchill’s Chartwell estate letterhead, the signed typed letter tipped in to Volume I reads: “My dear Trevelyan, I am anxious that you should receive a copy of my book as soon as possible, for I do not think you could form any real impression from reading the extracts in the Sunday Times. I have now received a few advance copies and hasten to send you one. The date of publication is 6th October, so in the meanwhile please do not allow the volume out of your hands. I feel that my criticism of Macaulay will distress you. But as I proceeded I could not help becoming more conscious of the continued and progressive injury which Marlborough has suffered and will continue to suffer at his hands. It is little I can do to stem the tide which has been set flowing round the globe. I trust you will bear this in mind if you feel hurt by what I have written. Let me again thank you for your courtesy in allowing me to print a facsimile of Marlborough’s letter to William. Yours sincerely, Winston S. Churchill.” The dated inscriptions inscriptions in each volume read, with minor variation, “To George M. Trevelyan from Winston Churchill.” Macaulay, a Whig, was extremely critical of Marlborough, a Tory, in his unfinished History of England from the Accession of James the Second. Macaulay accused Marlborough of betraying the allied English and Dutch forces by warning the French of a planned assault of the French port of Brest in 1694. Issued simultaneously with the signed limited edition of 155 copies. Errata slips present in Volumes II and III; without errata slip to Volume I, as is expected from a prepublication copy. Without original dust jackets. Cohen A97.2. Woods A40a.

Very minor occasional foxing to interiors, front inner hinge of Volume III expertly reinforced. Expert restoration to lower edge of front cover in Volume I, fading to spines of Volumes I to III. Near-fine condition. Inscribed Marlborough sets are extremely scarce, especially with such impeccable association and provenance.