The Unknown War: The Eastern Front by Winston S. Churchill - 1937

London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1937. Hardcover. Here is the scarce Keystone Library issue of the sixth and final book of Churchill's acclaimed history of the First World War in the original dust jacket. In originally proposing this book to his publisher, Charles Scribner, Churchill wrote: "In the previous volumes of the World Crisis I have described only in a few pages the course of events in the Eastern theatre. They have merely been the background of our main drama of the war. But now I think I might write a volume called 'The Eastern Front', which would be separate from but supplementary to our five volume history." The British first edition, first printing, is the scarcest volume of the six. Respectable copies are in particularly short supply and copies with the original dust jackets extravagantly rare. The publisher's Keystone Library edition offered here was produced six years after the first British edition, had only a single printing, and is nearly as scarce as the first edition, particularly in the dust jacket. Thornton Butterworth's Keystone Library series was intended as a lower priced series for titles which had run their course as trade editions. Today these Keystone Library editions are increasingly prized by collectors, particularly when accompanied by their original dust jackets. Thornton Butterworth printed the "Keystone Library" issue of The Unknown War using their first edition plates. Consequently, the contents are identical, with the addition of a Keystone Library list of publications in the prelims, the Keystone Library device on the title page, and notation of this later issue on the copyright page. Even the first edition’s folding color map of the first edition is retained at page 368. The binding size and style are the same as the British first edition of 1931. The only difference in style is that, for this issue, the publisher decided to use the same title as the U.S. first edition, using the original British first edition title as a subtitle instead. The binding cloth, though similar in color to the first edition, is coarser and did not wear quite as well. The dust jacket is quite different, printed black and red on heavy, scored, pale greenish paper decorated with the Keystone Library logos. This first and only Keystone Library issue approaches near fine in a very good dust jacket. The blue cloth binding is clean and tight with sharp corners. We note only slight wrinkling to the spine ends and trivial shelf wear to the bottom edge. The contents remain bright with a crisp feel, notable for a total absence of spotting. The rear folding map appears pristine, as do the balance of maps and illustrations. A single previous owner name is inked on the front free endpaper. The final free endpaper verso has some pencil notes to the upper two inches of the page referring to locations in the text; these are likely erasable, but we have left them intact for the new owner. The dust jacket is notably complete, with a modestly toned spine and abrasion scars to the three price locations at the lower spine and lower front face corners. On the rare occasions that we encounter these Keystone Library dust jackets, a later bookseller has typically affixed a new price sticker to cover the original prices. In this case, it appears that a previous bookseller instead erased the original prices, leaving a small abrasion hole at the lower right front face which is the only loss to this dust jacket. Nonetheless, a superior and highly complete example of the quite scarce dust jacket, with the rubbed out prices aesthetically preferable to the typical bookseller sticker replacements. The dust jacket is protected in a removable, archival quality clear cover. Bibliographic reference: Cohen A69.10, Woods/ICS A31(e), Langworth p.120.