"IF YOU CAN KEEP YOUR HEAD WHEN ALL ABOUT YOU…"

KIPLING, Rudyard. If. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1929. Oblong 12mo (6-1/2 by 4-1/2 inches), original tan paper boards, eight double leaves unopened at top edge. $2200.

Uncommon early separate printing of Kipling's verse celebration of Victorian stoicism, one of the most beloved British poems of all time.

Dr. Leander Starr Jameson visited Rudyard Kipling and his family in the fall of 1909. "After a shaky start as leader of failed military raid in 1895 Jameson had gone on to become one of the most respected South African prime ministers. Young John Kipling was very impressed by his father's heroic friend. His son's reaction and his own respect for Jameson were in his mind as Kipling penned the words to his famous poem, If" (Dalhousie University). First published in Rewards and Fairies (1910), the poem, in Kipling's words, "escaped from the book, and for a while ran about the world." As late as 1995 and then again in 2005, a national BBC Television poll found "If " to be Britain's favorite poem. Originally published in 1910. Each double leaf framed by a fleur-de-lis border printed in green, front cover with the same border and with an Art Nouveau acanthus leaf decoration; title page with swastika (favored by Kipling as an auspicious symbol until 1933, when the author had his agent request that his U.K. and U.S. publishers remove the design from all of his books). Inked gift inscription dated 1936 on the front free endpaper.

Pages clean; boards with spots of waterstaining, mostly confined to back cover. An extremely good copy of this scarce, attractive edition.