Winston S. Churchill
MY AFRICAN JOURNEY, Winston S. Churchill
London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908.First edition, first impression.
Octavo. Photographic frontispiece, 46 photographic plates and 3 maps. Bound in the original red cloth, with the spine lettered and ruled in gilt, and the front cover lettered and decorated in black, blue and grey.
A bright and highly desirable copy of Winston Churchill’s account of his 1907 journey through British East Africa, written at a moment when the young statesman was already transforming himself from soldier, journalist and adventurer into one of the most recognisable political figures of the age.
Churchill travelled through what is now Kenya and Uganda while serving as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. The journey gave him material for one of his most energetic early books: a work of travel, politics, hunting and imperial observation, first serialised in the Strand Magazine before appearing in book form in 1908. It is Churchill in a particularly revealing phase - still full of youthful appetite for danger and spectacle, but already thinking like a minister about railways, administration, public health, commerce and the future of British East Africa.
The book is especially prized for its breadth. Churchill writes of the Uganda Railway, District Officers, the landscapes of East Africa, the promise and contradictions of colonial development, the problem of sleeping sickness, and the drama of big game hunting, including rhinoceros. Few of his early books combine so naturally the public and private Churchill: the sportsman, the traveller, the journalist and the politician all appearing in the same narrative.
This copy is particularly attractive in the original decorated cloth, the red boards remaining unusually bright. The endpapers are clean, with no inscriptions. Sourced from a private collection in South Africa.
Bibliographical references: Cohen A27.1; Czech, African Big Game Hunting, p. 37; Woods, Artillery of Words.
A handsome copy of one of Churchill’s most engaging pre-war works, and an important title for collectors of Churchill, African travel, British East Africa, Kenya, Uganda, colonial history and big game hunting literature.
