Sought-after complete first edition book set: The World Crisis, comprising five works in six volumes. First editions. London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1923–1931. Hardcovers bound in the publisher's original blue cloth with gilt-lettered spines, 6.5 x 9.5, with volume titles as follows: Vol. I: 1911–1914 (536 pages), Vol. II: 1915 (557), Vol. III: 1916–1918, Part I (292), Vol. IV: 1916–1918, Part II (296). Vol. V: The Aftermath (474), and Vol. VI: The Eastern Front (368). Overall book condition: VG/None, with an errata slip tipped into Vol. IV, light mottled foxing to textblocks (mostly confined to edges and endpapers), ownership inscriptions inside Vols. II and V, some rubbing to extremities, and the tipped-in frontispiece of the final volume partially detached.
Churchill's history of the First World War is widely considered to be his magnum opus. His American biographer William Manchester wrote: 'His masterpiece is The World Crisis, published over a period of several years, 1923 to 1931, a six-volume, 3,261-page account of the Great War, beginning with its origins in 1911 and ending with its repercussions in the 1920s. Magnificently written, it is enhanced by the presence of the author at the highest councils of war and in the trenches as a battalion commander.' Skilled as a writer, orator, and historian, Churchill would receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 'for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.'
