Onwards to Victory, pre-publication review copy of the first edition with the publisher's review slip

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1944. First edition, only printing. Hardcover. This is a pre-publication publisher's review copy of the U.S. first edition, only printing in collector-worthy condition. Laid in, we were pleased to discover an original Little, Brown & Company review slip. Addressed “To the literary editor:” the slip specifies “This book will be published on:” with an ink-stamped date of “JUL 13 1944”. Three requests are printed: “Do not review before publication date. Send tear sheets or clippings of your review. Do not quote more than 500 words without special permission.”

The volume is in near fine condition in a very good dust jacket. The red cloth binding is beautifully bright and clean with sharp corners. We note only trivial wrinkling to the spine ends. The contents are likewise notably clean with no previous ownership marks and no spotting. The dust jacket is neatly price-clipped with light wear to extremities and tiny chip losses to the spine head and corners, but nonetheless notably clean. Quite unusually for the edition is a bright, unfaded red spine panel. The dust jacket is protected beneath a removable, clear, archival cover.

Onwards to Victory is the fourth volume of Winston Churchill's war speeches, containing speeches from 1943. A little before mid-year, on 19 May 1943 Churchill gave his second address to the U.S. Congress. Seventeen long months of war had passed since his first, just after Pearl Harbor. Churchill cautioned, invoking, for his American audience, the grim memory of the prolonged outcome of the U.S. Civil War, "No one after Gettysburg doubted which way the dread balance of war would incline.  Yet far more blood was shed after the Union victory at Gettysburg than in all the fighting which went before.” That theme of maintaining the momentum of urgency repeated throughout the year. On 9 November 1943 Churchill told the audience at the Lord Mayor’s Day Luncheon "We must not lose for a moment the sense and consciousness of urgency and crisis which must continue to drive us, even though we are in the fifth year of war… victory will certainly be won... But that does not mean that our war task is done.” Late November 1943 saw Churchill celebrate his 69th birthday at the Teheran conference with Roosevelt and Stalin.

During his long public life, Winston Churchill played many roles worthy of note - Member of Parliament for more than half a century, soldier and war correspondent, author of scores of books, ardent social reformer, combative cold warrior, Nobel Prize winner, painter. But Churchill's preeminence as a historical figure owes most to his indispensable leadership during the Second World War, when his soaring and defiant oratory sustained his countrymen and inspired the free world. Of Churchill, Edward R. Murrow said: "He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle." When Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953, it was partly “…for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values."

Between 1941 and 1946, Churchill's war speeches were published in seven individual volumes in both British and U.S. editions. The U.S. first editions were generally published in smaller numbers and are considerably scarcer today than their British counterparts.

Reference: Cohen A194.2, Woods/ICS A101(b), Langworth p.224