Description
The first American edition of My Battle (Mein Kampf) by Adolf Hitler, in the publisher’s first state dust jacket. The only known example of the first state jacket seen on the public market.
Octavo, x, 297pp. [1]. Glossy black cloth, title printed in copper lettering on spine and front cover. Top edge dyed pink. This work is complete with a frontispiece portrait and three additional photographic plates. A few thumbprints to leafends, some loss of gilt on front cover. In the publisher’s first state dust jacket, $3.00 on front flap, archival tissue reinforcement to front hinge, light soiling to covers, chip along bottom edge of the front panel, tape remnant along front hinge, wear at head of the spine, a very good example. (Pastore, 201)
This is the first example of the first state dust jacket to appear on the public market.
The first abridged English translation of Mein Kampf was released in October 1933, after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor on January 30th, 1933. The first English translation was published by Hurst & Blackett in 1933, with the title “My Struggle.” This first American edition appeared at the same time, with only small variations to the British abridgment, but retitled “My Battle.” Both were based on the translation of Edgar Dugdale. Prior to publication in the United States, the book was met with protests and calls to boycott all books published by Houghton Mifflin.
The first print run of 7,603 copies, priced at $3.00, generated moderate commercial success. In the initial print run, 290 complementary copies were distributed, including a copy to President Roosevelt, with a note from the publisher: “…we have had no end of trouble over the book – protests from the Jews by the hundreds, and not all of them from the common run of shad.” (Pastore, p. 122) In FDR’s copy, he wrote the following: “This translation is so expurgated as to give a wholly false view of what Hitler really is or says – The German original would make a different story. Franklin D. Roosevelt / The White House / 1933.”
By 1937, Houghton Mifflin decided to risk a second edition, with a retail price of $2.50, a new dust jacket containing a provocative quote by columnist Dorothy Thompson, and illustrated with the colors of the Weimar Republic. The dust jacket resulted in a diplomatic protest from the German government, demanding that it be replaced with an approved design from the German publisher Eher Verlag, but Houghton Mifflin refused.
