"A SAGA OF HARD PHYSICAL WORK IN CONFLICT WITH NATURAL FORCES": FIRST EDITION OF KIPLING'S CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS

KIPLING, Rudyard. Captains Courageous: A Story of the Grand Banks. London: Macmillan, 1897. Octavo, original gilt-stamped pictorial blue cloth, all edges gilt. $1750.

Preferred first English edition of Kipling's richly detailed tale of American deep-sea fishing and faith in hard work, with frontispiece and 21 illustrations by I.W. Taber. A lovely copy.

Like his two Jungle Books, Kipling wrote this 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). "This is the only book of Kipling's which is set entirely in America. All the characters are American. Not only that, but the heart of the book—its moral in a single sentence—is one of Kipling's main beliefs of this period expressed in terms essentially American, or perhaps more particularly New England. He put it later in verse: 'And the Gods of the Copy-book Maxims said: 'If you don't work you will die!' It is a saga of hard physical work in conflict with natural forces. It is a book which could hardly have been written by anyone who did not admire Huckleberry Finn; it is a book whose claim to survival rests mainly on detail, and it is all American detail" (Mason, 119-20). With publisher's rear advertisement leaf; without scarce dust jacket. First serialized in Pearson's Magazine, December 1896 to April 1897; this edition published October 18, 1897 (following the American edition of September 16). Livingston 137. OCEL I:548.

A bright, handsome copy in fine condition.