Collected Verse

Rudyard KIPLING

Item#: 116946 We're sorry, this item has been sold

Collected Verse
Collected Verse
Collected Verse

"OH, WE LOVED HIM IN THE JUNGLE!": RUDYARD KIPLING'S COLLECTED VERSE, FINELY PRINTED 1912 EDITION, WITH HAND-PAINTED MINIATURE OF KIPLING INSET INTO FRONT COVER

KIPLING, Rudyard. Collected Verse. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1912. Large octavo, contemporary full teal morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spine and covers, front cover inset with a Cosway-style miniature portrait of Kipling painted on ivory and mounted behind glass, watered silk endpapers, all edges gilt. Housed in a custom cloth slipcase.

First English trade edition of Kipling's collected verse, in an exquisite full morocco-gilt Cosway-style binding with a hand-painted portrait of Kipling inset into the front cover behind glass, handsomely executed by Bayntun.

Celebrated author of classic poems such as "Mandalay," "Gunga Din," "Recessional" and "The White Man's Burden," Kipling won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. "The family and the Empire were the poles about which his genius turned" (DNB). Cosway bindings (named for renowned 19th-century English miniaturist Richard Cosway) were first commissioned in the early 1900s by London booksellers Sotheran from the famous Rivière bindery, who employed Miss C.B. Currie to faithfully imitate Cosway's detailed watercolor style of portraiture. These delicate miniature paintings, often on ivory, were set into the covers or doublures of richly-tooled bindings and protected by a thin pane of glass. Cosway bindings executed by other than the original collaborators—still splendid productions—are designated as "Cosway-style" bindings. First published in New York in 1907; this English trade edition issued the same year as a limited large-paper edition of 500 copies on handmade paper and another limited large-paper edition of 100 copies on Japan vellum. Livingston, 291-92. Richards A258.

A splendid volume in fine condition.

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