Can you direct me to a set of the “Col­lect­ed Works” of Win­ston Churchill? I sus­pect they are pricey and rare. So how do I build a col­lec­tion of Churchill at a rea­son­able price? —G.S., Maine, USA

Collected Works and Essays

You refer to the Col­lect­ed Works of Sir Win­ston Churchill, 40 vol­umes includ­ing four vol­umes of Col­lect­ed Essays. It was pub­lished by the Library of Impe­r­i­al His­to­ry in Lon­don in 1974-75. (The Diner’s Club pro­duced anoth­er col­lec­tion of Major Works, but they were not complete.)

These books are dis­cussed else­where on this web­site, and in my Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Win­ston Churchill.

The “Col­lect­ed Works” are expen­sive reprints. Nice sets of Churchill’s books can be put togeth­er with trade edi­tions for much less, and the Churchill spe­cial­ist book­sellers have a broad listing.

Pros and cons

Nowa­days hard­ly any­one can afford the Col­lect­ed Works. Dubbed the “Cen­te­nary Lim­it­ed Edi­tion,” some 2000 sets were pub­lished in bla­tant pur­suit of lucre. The sto­ry (recount­ed here­in) is dis­ap­point­ing. Orig­i­nals were bound in vel­lum, which tends to swell and warp, mak­ing them hard to remove from their slipcases.

In the 1990s I found and began bind­ing sev­er­al hun­dred remain­ing sheets in leather as well as vel­lum, but those too are now out of sight. Also, the gen­er­al edi­tor of the series, the late Fred Woods, edit­ed many of the texts (mak­ing changes dis­cussed in detail in the Connoisseur’s Guide), which makes them use­less as a source of Churchill’s orig­i­nal words.

The great advan­tage of the enter­prise was the four-vol­ume Col­lect­ed Essays, the only col­lec­tion of Churchill’s peri­od­i­cal arti­cles (oth­er than those reprint­ed in his books) ever pub­lished in vol­ume form, with a fine intro­duc­tion by the late Michael Wolff.

Owing to pop­u­lar demand the Essays were also issued in a half-blue leather “Cen­te­nary Edi­tion,” which was sold sep­a­rate­ly. Sets some­times sur­face in that form, but the Essays were nev­er reprint­ed, and demand is high, forc­ing prices up accord­ing­ly. Alas, though I’ve tried to inter­est the pub­lish­ers of lim­it­ed edi­tions from Eas­t­on Press to the Folio Soci­ety in reprint­ing the set, none has ever bit­ten the bullet.

Further reading

“The Sor­did His­to­ry of Churchill’s Col­lect­ed Works,” 2023.

“Churchill’s Col­lect­ed Essays, Invalu­ably Com­piled by Michael Wolff,” 2023.