(London: Macmillan and Co Limited, 1906).

IMPORTANT FIRST EDITION. Winston's very successful biography of his MP father. William Manchester, Winston's biographer, considered it, despite the son's apparently ambivalent feelings toward his father, "a tribute to filial devotion."
"Outside Parliament, Churchill devoted much of his time during 1904 and 1905 to compiling a biography of Lord Randolph. He was motivated in part by a desire for an intimate knowledge of his father that had been denied him during Lord Randolph's lifetime... When the book emerged in 1906, it was widely hailed as one of the best political biographies in English and its prose style is still greatly admired today... Contemporary readers were struck by the frankness and openness of the account, contrasting favourably with the pious acts of homage served up as biography by other sons of famous fathers. It was, after all, a study in failure rather than success. The writing of the biography marked the point at which Churchill at last outgrew his father's memory" (Grant, 47). Item #25407

2 volumes. First edition. With 18 illustrations including two fine photogravure frontispieces. Large, thick 8vo, publisher s original burgundy cloth lettered and decorated in gilt on the spines and upper covers. xvii, 564; 523, index pp. A very pleasing set. Quite handsome copies of both volumes, bright and clean and very well preserved throughout, just a tiny bit of spotting to the fore-edges and trivial mellowing or age evidence to the extremities.