37 First English Translation Of Hans Christian Andersen’s Wonderful Stories, 1846, With Four Lovely Hand-Colored Plates 47ANDERSEN, Hans Christian. Wonderful Stories for Children. Translated from the Danish by Mary Howitt. London, 1846. Small octavo, original blue cloth gilt, custom clamshell box. $17,000 First edition of the extraordinarily rare first translation into English of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories, with four handcolored plates, in original cloth. “In February 1846 Mary Howitt brought out her own selection of Andersen’s fairy tales… But 1846 was altogether an annus mirabilis for Andersen in the English publishing world. Also in February there appeared a collection of stories translated by Charles Boner. May saw versions of Andersen’s fairy-tales by Caroline Peachey… and June a further selection by Charles Boner” (Binding, Hans Christian Andersen, European Witness). “Mrs. Howitt’s was the best of these, and was greeted with a chorus of praise from all the leading literary journals” (Muir, 106). “The earliest collections in Danish [of Andersen’s tales] are of the utmost rarity; and the English translations in 1846 and 1847 are almost as rare” (Muir, 52). Only slightest foxing to preliminaries and a few finger smudges to interior, expert restoration to cloth extremities. An extremely good copy. First Editions Of Kipling’s Jungle Books And Captains Courageous, With Kipling’s Signature Laid In 48KIPLING, Rudyard. The Jungle Book. WITH: The Second Jungle Book. WITH: Captains Courageous. WITH: Soldier Tales. London and New York, 1894-95, 1897, 1896. Four volumes. Octavo, original blue cloth gilt, custom slipcase. $8000 First editions of Kipling’s classic Jungle Books, “replete with adventure and excitement,” together with a first edition of his Captains Courageous and an early printing of Soldier Tales, in the matching publisher’s blue cloth, with Kipling’s signature laid into the first Jungle Book. “The child who has never run with Mowgli’s wolf pack, or stood with Parnesius and Pertinax to defend the Northern Wall… has missed something that he will not get from any other writer” (Carpenter & Prichard, 297). Like his two Jungle Books, Kipling wrote Captains Courageous, a morality tale of life aboard a New England fishing boat, while living near Brattleboro, Vermont, his wife’s hometown. The book thus contains “something of his feelings about America—both his affection and his irritation” (Carpenter & Prichard, 296). Soldier Tales was published within a month of the first printing. Livingston 104, 116, 133, 137. Interiors fine, mild wear to cloth on Jungle Books, mild spotting to cloth of Captains Courageous, gilt bright on all four volumes. A handsome set of Kipling works.
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