The Story of the Malakand Field Force.: An Episode of Frontier War. With maps, plans, etc. This edition is intended for circulation only in India and the British Colonies.

London and Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co.,, 1898. Colonial issue of Churchill's first book First edition, colonial issue in cloth, of Churchill's first book, with the bookplate of Edward Priaulx Tennant, 1st Baron Glenconner (1859-1920), Churchill's fellow Liberal Party MP from 1906 to 1910. Tipped in preceding the title page is an autograph note "with the author's compliments", not in Churchill's hand and probably a later addition. Churchill was correspondent for the Daily Telegraph on Sir Bindon Blood's punitive 1897 expedition against the Afghan tribesmen of the north-west frontier, during which he "took part in several skirmishes in which he came under fire and witnessed acts of barbarism by both sides" (ODNB). He consolidated his reports into book form on his return to Bangalore, and his account was published in March 1898. Copies were bound for colonial export in both cloth and in wrappers. Copies are found without (first state) or with (second state) an errata slip, here the latter. When the errata slip is present, it can be the same as the domestic issue or an Indian variant, again here the latter. "At least as desirable as the home issue, the clothbound colonial is a Victorian period piece, with its Longmans' trademark Colonial Library pictorial binding... the wrapper version, while much rarer today, is not as aesthetically delectable" (Langworth, p. 18). Tennant toured the Far East in 1902 and was present at the Delhi Durbar - he may have acquired this copy of the colonial issue there. This followed visits to India in 1886, 1889, 1892, and 1894, where he took a keen interest in Indian administration and the problems of the subcontinent. Provenance: the collection of Steve Forbes. Octavo. Original grey cloth, spine lettered in gilt, front cover with lettering and design in blue. Half-tone portrait frontispiece with tissue-guard, 6 maps, of which 2 folding and in colour. Early list of page references on front free endpaper. A little rubbed and soiled, inner hinge slightly split preceding frontispiece. A very good copy. Cohen A1.2.c. Richard Langworth, A Connoisseur's Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill, 1998.