60 Great Books Bauman Rare Books - 26 - First Edition Of Churchill’s Second Book, The River War 24. CHURCHILL, Winston. The River War, An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan. London, 1899. Two volumes. Thick octavo, original giltstamped navy cloth, custom clamshell box. $11,500. First edition, first printing, of Churchill’s difficult to obtain second book, one of only 2000 copies printed, in original cloth. Churchill served in the 21st Lancers during Lord Kitchener’s campaign on the Upper Nile in the late 1890s and was a participant there in the last great cavalry charge of the British Army. “Far from accepting uncritically the superiority of British civilization, Churchill shows his appreciation for the longing for liberty among the Indigenous inhabitants of the Sudan... [H]e criticizes the British army, and in particular its commander Lord Kitchener, for departing in its campaign from the kind of civilized respect for the liberty and humanity of adversaries that alone could justify British civilization and imperial rule over the Sudan” (Langworth, 27). This account includes 34 maps, 20 of which are printed in color and folding, and 58 illustrations, including tissue-guarded frontispieces, photogravure portraits, and numerous in-text illustrations. First printing, second state, with the final quotation mark after the words LONDON GAZETTE on page 459 of Volume II. Without original dust jackets, so rare as to be unobtainable. Cohen A2.1.b. Woods A2(a). Manuscript letter loosely inserted from publisher Adam Black (not the publisher of the present work) to General Lord Mark Kerr, dated 28 February 1894; ownership signature of Kerr in both volumes. Lord Kerr was a British Army officer who served in the Crimean War and in India. Occasional faint foxing to text, a few rubs to clean cloth, gilt bright. A nearfine copy with a nice British military provenance. “Churchill’s history of the conquest of the Sudan remains as instructive to us today as it was for its first audience.”—City Journal
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