The River War, An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan

London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1899. First edition, first printing, first state. Hardcover. This is an unusually well-preserved set of the first edition, first printing, first state of Churchill's second published work, the lengthiest from his time as an itinerant cavalry officer and war correspondent during the waning days of Queen Victoria’s reign.

This first edition is not only compellingly written, but also physically beautiful. The two large, lavish volumes are decorated with gilt representations of the Mahdi's tomb on the spines and a gunboat on the front covers. Each volume is printed on heavy paper with a profusion of illustrations, maps, and plans. They are also scarce; there were 2,000 copies of this first edition, first printing. There were two states of the first printing, distinguished by a single typographical error in the divisional half-title on p.459 of Volume II, corrected in the second state by the addition of a single quotation mark following ‘LONDON GAZETTE’. This error seems to have been quite swiftly corrected; first state copies are quite scarce.

This first state set of the first edition, first printing is very good plus. The original bindings are often both significantly worn and broken loose from their massive text blocks. In this case, the bindings are not only unusually bright and clean, but also still firmly anchored to the text blocks, with sharp corners and only mild wear. The gilt is bright, including the striking illustrations of gunboats and the Mahdi’s tomb on the front covers and spines. Shelf presentation is compelling, with no discernible color shift between the covers and spines. Wear is modest, including a little shelf wear to extremities, mostly at the spine ends, and a few trivial blemishes to the covers.

The contents are quite good for the edition. The original black endpapers are present, as are all of the extensive maps and plans, as well as the frontispiece portraits and tissue guards. The contents are not only unusually tight, but the black endpapers show no hint of even cosmetic splits at the gutters. Spotting, the only appreciable defect, is intermittent throughout, generally light within the text, significant only to the prelims. Absent the spotting, we would grade this set as near fine.

The sole previous ownership mark is the tiny bookseller’s sticker of “W. B. CLARKE CO. BOOKSELLERS & STATIONERS” of “Park St. Church, Boston” affixed to the lower Volume II front free endpaper recto. William B. Clarke (1848-1933) bought and renamed W. H. Piper & Co. booksellers in 1874 and seems plausibly the original seller of this set. Volume I of first edition, first printing sets often contains a publisher's catalogue bound in at the rear. Churchill’s bibliographer, Ron Cohen, speculates that copies lacking the catalogue were likely "destined for sale in either the American or other overseas markets." This set was originally bound without the catalogue, consistent with the vintage Boston bookseller ticket.

The Mahdi, Mohammed Ahmed, was a messianic Islamic leader in central and northern Sudan in the final decades of the 19th century. In 1885, General Gordon famously lost his life in a doomed defense of the capitol, Khartoum. Though the Mahdi died that same year, his theocracy continued until 1898, when General Kitchener reoccupied the Sudan. With Kitchener – to his vexation – was a very young Winston Churchill, who participated in “the last great British cavalry charge” during the battle of Omdurman in September 1898, where the Mahdist forces were decisively defeated. Writing about the British campaign in the Sudan, the young Churchill was unusually sympathetic to the Mahdist forces and critical of Imperial cynicism and cruelty. This work offers the candid perspective of the future 20th century icon from the 19th century battlefields where Churchill learned to write and earned his early fame. The text is arresting, insightful, powerfully descriptive, and of enduring relevance.

Reference: Cohen A2.1.a, Woods/ICS A2(a.1), Langworth p.29