A Roving Commission.: My Early Life.

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,, 1930. First US edition, first printing, of Churchill's only volume of sustained autobiography, retitled from its British publication under My Early Life earlier that month, and covering his formative years from his birth in 1874 until his election as MP for Oldham in 1900. This copy is from the collection of Churchill's bibliographer Ronald Cohen. Among his most widely read works, it provides a highly entertaining account of his childhood, schooldays at Harrow, military training at Sandhurst, experiences as a war correspondent in Cuba, service attached to the Malakand Field Force on the North-West Frontier Province of India, charging with the 21st Lancers at Omdurman, and as a POW in South Africa during the Boer War. Overall, it gives a "witty and elegiac account of his youth shot through with regret at the decline of the social and imperial order in which he had grown up" (ODNB). Provenance: Ronald Cohen, with his ownership inscription in pencil on the front free endpaper. Cohen's Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill, published in three volumes in 2006, is the authoritative source for collectors, librarians, and dealers. Octavo. Original red cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. With 28 maps and illustrations. Slight sunning at head of spine; jacket sunned as often and worn, not price-clipped: a near-fine copy in good jacket. Cohen A91.2.a.