NAPOLEON'S MEMOIRS / GOLDEN COCKEREL PRESS / 1 of 50

[Napoleon][Sangorski and Sutcliffe][Golden Cockerel Press] Chair, Somerset de (editor and translator).  NAPOLEON'S MEMOIRS.  London: Golden Cockerel Press, 1945.  Two folio volumes (approx 7.75 x 12.5”).  422, [1]; 78, [2]pp.  Bound in full purple and green morocco gilt by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, engraved title vignettes and designs on the bindings by John Buckland Wright.  Boards decorated with gilt bee tools and vertical gilt fillets, the spines titled in gilt and decorated with gilt bee and press device tools, in compartments separated by raised bands.  Cartographic endpapers after de Chair.  Top edge gilt, others uncut.  Signed by the editor.  With collotype reproductions of two portraits and a page of manuscript hand-written by Napoleon.

FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING, SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION (Number 42 of 50).  Two hardcover volumes in their original yellow buckram slipcase.  One (No. 42) of only 50 copies specially bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe.  The overall edition was limited to 500 numbered copies.  Volume One: Corsica to Marengo; Volume Two: The Waterloo Campaign.  FINE.

Napoleon's Memoirs, dictated to Baron Gourgaud at St. Helena, and smuggled to Europe, were first published in 1820.  An English translation by Barry O'Meara, who had volunteered to go to St. Helena as Napoleon's British surgeon, was published in February 1820, under the title Historical Memoirs of Napoleon, and French editions were published that year in both Paris and Brussels. No English translation or edition had been published since O'Meara's translation of 1820, and de Chair was able to find copies of that translation only in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library at Oxford. His translation of Napoleon's Memoirs was begun in the Wingfield Morris Orthopaedic Hospital, Oxford, on 17 July, 1943 and finished at Kinnerarach, Isle of Gigha, on 17 September, 1943.

"The bindings of the ‘special’ copies were perhaps the best to be found on any Cockerel book up to date, and could hardly be repeated, owing to the current scarcity of gold. Having used up the whole of his quota on these books, Mr. Bray of Sangorski and Sutcliffe gently dissuaded me from a repetition of such extravagance. At this date it was still possible to have leathers dyed to special colours, and the shades of purple and green were just what I had desired." (Cockalorum 167).

"In addition to Napoleonic eagles on the title-pages, John Buckland-Wright also designed the bindings and devices on the spines. These include a bee, as this was adopted by Napoleon as a badge. His eagles are heraldically correctly portrayed as facing to the dexter, but Napoleon made it a personal point of difference to have his eagle facing to the sinister, thus following Roman precedent: the J.B.W. eagles are therefore technically at fault." (Reid A43).

“Designed, produced and published by Christopher Sandford at the Golden Cockerel Press, London in 13 point Perpetua type on Arnold’s mould-made paper, and finished on the 28th day of August, 1945.  Composition, presswork and collotyping under the supervision of F. J. Newbery at the Chiswick Press.  Compositors: V. P. Atkinson and A. W. Dick.  Pressmen: W. H. Solly and H. Barker.  The Edition is limited to 500 copies, of which Numbers 1-50 are bound in full-morocco, hand-tooled and contain a collotype reproduction of a passage of text written in the Emperor’s own hand.  The engraving on the title-page and the designs on the bindings are by John Buckland Wright.  Number: 42.  [Signed] Somerset de Chair” - (Limitation Page).