May 14, 2013

Finest Hour 149, Winter 2010-11

Page 51

“A1” Returns in Leather

Winston S. Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force (Cohen A1). Easton Press Military History Library, 232 pp. Available from the publisher (tel. 800-243-5160 or via www. eastonpressbooks.com), $79 postpaid.

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By Richard M. Langworth

The Easton Press is known for its leatherbound editions of classic books—albeit not the greatest leather. They favor a stiff, highly varnished grade of pigskin, although they nicely trim their books with moire endpapers, silk page markers and gilt page edges.

Easton rendered a great service by reprinting three important multi-volume Churchill works. After Finest Hour expressed disappointment with their 1989 version of The Second World War (which did not use the definitive text), they consulted us over The World Crisis and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1991-92) offprinting from first editions and including full-color reprints of fold-out maps. Then in 2000, they reissued the Definitive Edition of Churchill’s 1952 collected War Speeches—which, like their World Crisis, cost far less than first editions, making the books particularly attractive to scholars and libraries.

We were not involved in Easton’s reprint of Churchill’s first book (Cohen A1), but unlike their recent reprint of My African Journey (see page 55), it is not an offprint of the Collected Works edition, edited by the late Fred Woods. It does include Woods’s redrawn maps, and all of his footnotes—more than in Churchill’s original, although all of WSC’s are included. But it lacks subject synopses following chapter heads, which appear in every previous Malakand.

For the 1974 Collected Works, Woods redrew many maps, eliminating some of the original fold-outs and changing certain map locations. Text editing varied, but he was particularly zealous with The River War. Names of places were modernized, and there were other textual revisions. One review commended Woods, saying that Churchill “took little care” over his maps. Scholars and bibliophiles thought otherwise.

Tracking text sources for each volume of Collected Works for my Connoissseur’s Guide in 1998, I found that the Malakand was based on the 1899 Silver Library text—a good choice. This was the first edition in which Churchill had the opportunity to correct the errors of his uncle Moreton Frewen (aka “Mortal Ruin”), who edited the 1898 original. Nevertheless, Woods did alter such words as “Karachi,” which Churchill spelled “Kurrâchee.”

On this volume it seems clear that Easton reset Woods’s text, omitted the chapter synopses and renumbered Woods’s footnotes sequentially. Woods (and Easton) also omitted Churchill’s important second edition preface. But there is no way to tell, short of a page-by-page comparison, how true to the Silver Library edition the text remains.

More could have been done. The recent and forthcoming ISI editions of Thoughts and Adventures and Great Contemporaries, edited by James Muller and Paul Courtenay (FH 143: 44-45) are models of what a modern edition should be. While Churchill’s text is left in its original form, erudite new introductions and profuse footnotes provide any needed corrections and tell us what happened to people, places and things over the years since the first edition.

The Malakand has had a new life of late with its relevant reflections on warfare in that part of the world. (See “Coalition with Primitives 2010,” FH 147: 22-23). But Easton provides no special introduction, although a loose sheet describes the book with no reference to modern parallels.

Presuming Easton’s text is essentially Woods’s, this is nothing more than a nicely bound version of the Collected Works edition. And, since this same text was offprinted by Leo Cooper, W. W. Norton, Barnes & Noble and others, you don’t have to spend $79 to own one. Just dial up www.bookfinder.com to browse among offerings priced as low as $8.41. Still, if you wish to own the definitive text, consider acquiring a reading copy of the 1901 Silver Library or 1916 Shilling Library editions.