June 24, 2015

Finest Hour 122, Spring 2004

Page 37

By CHRISTOPHER H. STERLING

Annotated Bibliography of Works About Sir Winston Churchill, by Curt J. Zoller. M.E. Sharpe, 384 pp., $75. Member price $60.

If you are a collector of books about Churchill, this new guide is an indispensable tool. Assembling any book-length bibliography is no easy task. I have published two, on very different topics, and can speak from experience. So I hugely respect the effort that went into this new Churchill bibliography—a substantial canon in anybody’s terms.

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Curt Zoller needs no introduction to readers of Finest Hour, for he is a well-known collector and contributor to the journal. With the aid of Richard Langworth, Mark Weber, and other authorities, he has put together a comprehensive annotated guide for collectors and libraries of just what was published about Churchill, from the first article entries of 1900 (the first biography appeared five years later) right up to the last year or so.

Zoller divides his more than 2,500 citations into six sections, each of which is arranged and numbered in chronological order. Section A focuses on books devoted entirely to some aspect of Churchill’s life (684 of them); Section B concerns “books containing substantial data about Winston S. Churchill” (more than 900); Section C covers articles and lecture series (nearly 650); Section D provides a handy list of reviews of Churchill’s own books; and Section E offers a three-page alphabetical listing by author of sixty theses and dissertations about Churchill (largely from American universities, but including some in other languages from other nations), the earliest dating from the 1940s. This is all held together with a solid index of author names and an index of titles, allowing users a variety of ways to access the material.

This is not, of course, the first attempt to record this literature, nor does Zoller make any such claim. Frederick Woods’ classic bibliography of Churchill’s own works included a 35-page unannotated checklist (Section E) of works about Churchill. The more recent bibliographic works by Barrett and Rasor (2000) expanded that ground. While Barrett suffers from a very odd organization (and often cites reprints rather than original editions) he offers lengthy and informed annotations. Rasor is exhausting, discussing (in the first half) and then listing nearly 3,100 items, some only tenuously connected to Churchill.

The Zoller approach is closer in style to that of Woods with its chronological ordering, sections delineated by type of publication, and brief annotations. His book is also more clearly focused on Churchill, and less on ancillary people and events. He is concerned not with physical characteristics sometimes of interest to collectors (size, type of binding, color, etc.), but rather with substance. By including page counts, impressions, and all editions in all languages, he provides a good sense of the scope of each work, and of the widespread interest in Churchill, which understandably expanded as his fame grew.

Turning to the specific sections, roughly half his bibliography is taken up with the “A” listing of works devoted to Churchill. These range from books (Al is Scott’s 1905 biography published when the subject was but 31 years old), to leaflets (A3 contains four pages, A7 only eight), and political pamphlets, often from specific campaigns (such as A5). Zoller does researchers a real service by combining all editions of a work under one master number, using letters to show varied or foreign translation appearances (so, for example, the 1927 “Ephesian” biography has Al la, Al lb, and Al lc editions—while the ubiquitous Lewis Broad biographies are A36a- A36j).

Fascinating are the citations of German propaganda biographies published from 1939 to 1945. Annotations are fair and balanced, and confirm that the annotators have actually read the books. You may not agree with each annotation, but it does tell you what to expect.

Very few errors have crept in (example: A514 and B861 are one and the same). Though the annotation doesn’t suggest this, I bet A449 and A450 are merely reprints of A162, as angry old Francis Neilson (about 90 years old in 1954), was surely gone by 1981. And we didn’t really need the final entry (A684)—a self-description of this book itself!

I had more trouble with Zoller’s Section B. Saying this contains books with “substantial data” about Churchill, Zoller blurs his intent by two editorial decisions. First, he includes too many juvenile works and “100 Famous People” anthologies which devote but a handful of pages to Churchill—surely not “substantial” by anyone’s definition. Such “potted” material is not only insubstantial; it adds underbrush, confusing an otherwise useful listing. Charlie Chaplin’s autobiography (B444) includes three pages on meetings with Churchill. Even considering the source, does this qualify as “substantial”? Perhaps we needed a closer definition of what “substantial” was taken to include.

Second, not enough of these citations carry annotation to tell us what information, substantial or otherwise, is contained about Churchill. B39’s annotation, for example, quotes a single line about Churchill from what must be a larger treatise on him. In other cases, too much may be assumed of modern (or at least younger) readers. Mention of Low’s Autobiography (B318) tells us nothing about Low (the famous political cartoonist, who had a love-hate relationship with Churchill)—and many today will not know. A book on the papers of Hore-Belisha (B389) needs to tell modern readers who he was (in other places, Zoller does provide this vital service). B359 merely lists Bryant’s first book drawn from the Alanbrooke diaries without annotation—yet its appearance and critical comment on Churchill created quite a storm at the time (1959) and should have been mentioned. Fifty Ships That Saved the World (B468) merely lists two brief Churchill sections, without telling what the destroyers-for-bases deal, to which the title refers, was all about. B580 has a typo on the title, which is Churchills in Africa: the book deals with three Churchills, not just Winston.

Most of Section C (articles and lecture series) forgoes annotation; Zoller argues that the titles of articles are themselves revelatory. I might have included the individually-published speeches here as well, rather than in Section A, but judgment calls have to be made by any bibliographer. The many citations to Finest Hour would have been more helpful had they included the issue number rather than just the date (the same point applies to scholarly journals which are filed in libraries by volume). These FH entries were selected according to the judgment of Mr. Zoller, and judgments always differ. Sections D and E (reviews and disserations) both are useful guides in turn.

Such an indispensable bibliography is no easy thing to assemble, and Mr. Zoller is to be congratulated as well as thanked for the tool he’s given all Churchill collectors and researchers. There are many publications here that I did not know—and thus my own want list continues to grow! That is surely one sign of a useful reference book.