"AN HONORABLE PLACE IN ANY LIBRARY OF CHILDREN'S BOOKS": LOVELY FIRST EDITIONS OF KIPLING'S JUNGLE BOOKS, WITH AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED BY KIPLING TIPPED IN
KIPLING, Rudyard. The Jungle Book. WITH: The Second Jungle Book. London and New York: Macmillan, 1894-95. Two volumes. Octavo, original gilt-stamped pictorial blue cloth, all edges gilt. Housed in a custom clamshell box.
First editions of Kipling's classic Jungle Books, "replete with adventure and excitement." A very nice set, with a two-page autograph letter signed by Kipling tipped in.
"Among the 15 stories in [these volumes] are some of Kipling's most memorable narratives" (Abraham, 36). "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). Illustrated largely by W. H. Drake and Kipling's father, J. Lockwood Kipling, "this most desirable pair… will always fill an honorable place in any library of children's books" (Quayle 87).
The autograph letter, dated Sep. 22/[19]25, on Kipling's Bateman's estate letterhead, reads: "Dear Arthur Jones, Thank you very much indeed for your note and the enclosures which naturally interested me keenly. I expect that every man has to work out his creed according to his own wave-length and the hope is that the Great Receiving Station is tuned to take all wave-lengths. As to the general unrest of things, it looks as if the harvest was nearly ripe & the reaping and the sickle would be put in soon. No one will be more pathetically surprised than the gentlemen who did the sowing. Most sincerely, Rudyard Kipling." Kipling's correspondent is his friend, playwright and activist Henry Arthur Jones (1851-1929), who was involved in a bitter feud with Shaw and Wells in the final years of his life. Kipling's note is in response to the essay published later by Jones in the Daily Express, September 24, 1925, as part of a series called "My Religion," wherein Jones espoused an optimistic theism: "I discern an infrangible law compelling… one long march of unity and order of purpose" (Jones, Life and Letters of Henry Arthur Jones, 393-94).
"Of the seven stories and seven poems comprising The Jungle Book, only the stories had previously appeared in periodicals (in 1893 and 1894), and when collected here, each story had an additional verse heading appended." First edition of Jungle Book containing the imprint "R. & R. Clark" that appears in the "first copies… [of] the first print run… in later printings it is 'R. & R. Clark Ltd." (Richards A76); with numerous in-text and 20 full-page illustrations including frontispiece. First English edition of Second Jungle Book issued only three days after the American edition, containing numerous in-text illustrations, decorative initials and head- and tailpieces: with first edition imprint "R. & R. Clark, Limited" (238), rear advertisement leaf. Without rarely found dust jackets. Livingston 104, 116. Owner signature.
Occasional foxing, inner paper hinges a little tender, binding sound. Light rubbing to ends of gently mellowed spines, gilt bright. An extremely good set, desirable with an autograph letter signed by Kipling.