Description
The first edition of If It Had Happened Otherwise: Lapses Into Imaginary History, edited by J.C. Squire, with the publisher’s scarce dust jacket.
Octavo, vii, [1], 289pp, [1]. Original brick-red cloth, title stamped in gilt on spine. No additional printings noted. Bookseller’s invoice from 1967 included with this copy. Faint dust along top edge of text block, otherwise a fine example. In the publisher’s first state dust jacket, faint soiling along the spine, price clipped (21/net) front flap, free of restoration or notable wear, an outstanding example.
Includes the first book appearance of Churchill’s speculative essay “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg.”  (Woods B18) (Cohen B43.1.a)
An exceptional copy in this condition.
An anthology of counterfactual history, with contributions by Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Winston S. Churchill, H.A.L. Fisher, Philip Guedalla, Ronald Knox, Emil Ludwig, André Maurois, Harold Nicolson, J.C. Squire, and Milton Waldman.
This work was issued in a variant binding from Longman’s in 1931, with green textured cloth and a green dust jacket. (Cohen B43.1.b) Also published by the Viking Press in 1931, with the revised title of “If, or History Rewritten.” (Cohen B43.2)
