The Dawn of Liberation

London: Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1945. First edition, first printing. Hardcover. This is the British first edition, first printing, of the fifth volume of British Prime Minister Winston S Churchill's war speeches. This copy is noteworthy for interesting - though cryptic - postwar provenance. At the top of the front free endpaper recto is a three-line inscription: "To John | A great liberator, with much love | from the family at Clive House". In the same hand and ink, at the left upper center of the page is written "St Andrews Day |1945". Filling the bottom half of the page beside and below are the signatures of more than 50 individuals, both male and female, none with any apparent titular distinction. This would be an intriguing mystery to puzzle out.

Condition is very good in a good plus dust jacket. The blue cloth binding is clean, unfaded, tight, and square with bright spine gilt. Minor shelf wear is confined to extremities, including a bruised upper front cover corner. The contents are quite clean, with no spotting and only mild age-toning. The first printing dust jacket is both unfaded, with equally bright spine and front face hues, and unclipped, retaining the original lower front flap price. The jacket shows overall scuffing and wear, short closed tears, shallow loss at the spine head and flap fold corners and a larger triangular loss at the lower rear joint roughly .75 inches wide and 1 inch deep. The dust jacket is protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover.

This volume publishes Churchill’s speeches, broadcasts, messages, statements, and letters made, sent, and issued between 22 February and 31 December 1944. A full and momentous year, 1944 included the Normandy invasion, the largest amphibious operation in history, which re-established the Allied military presence in German-occupied Europe. While much fighting was yet to come and the war was not yet over, as 1944 drew to a close the suspended tensions of domestic politics as well as the complex jockeying for postwar spoils among allies intruded ever more urgently on a unified war effort. Churchill would be unable to hold the many political fractures and frustrations at bay for much longer. Indeed, the very day this British first edition of The Dawn of Liberation was published (26 July 1945) Churchill formally conceded the fall of his wartime government to Labor in the General Election of July 1945.

Few books are as emblematic of Churchill’s literary and leadership gifts as his war speeches volumes. During his long public life, Winston Churchill played many roles worthy of note - Member of Parliament for more than half a century, soldier and war correspondent, author of scores of books, ardent social reformer, combative cold warrior, Nobel Prize winner, painter. But Churchill's preeminence as a historical figure owes most to his indispensable leadership during the Second World War, when his soaring and defiant oratory sustained his countrymen and inspired the free world. Of Churchill, Edward R. Murrow said: "He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle." When Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953, it was partly “…for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” Between 1941 and 1946, Churchill's war speeches were published in seven individual volumes. The British first editions are visually striking, but were printed on cheap “War Economy Standard” paper, bound in coarse cloth, and wrapped in bright, fragile dust jackets. They proved highly susceptible to spotting, soiling, and fading, so the passage of time has been hard on most surviving first editions.

Reference: A214.1.a, Woods/ICS A107(a.1), Langworth p.228.