THE DEFINITIVE EDITION OF KIPLING’S WORKS, ONE OF ONLY 525 SETS SIGNED BY HIM, FINE IN PUBLISHER’S MOROCCO-GILT

KIPLING, Rudyard. The Sussex Edition of the Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Rudyard Kipling. London: Macmillan, (1938). Thirty-five volumes. Octavo, publisher's full niger morocco gilt, raised bands, marbled endpapers, top edge uncut and gilt, uncut and partly unopened. $20,000.

Deluxe signed limited “Sussex Edition” of Kipling’s complete works—the rarest edition of his works, representing his final revised text—one of only 525 sets signed by the author, in the publisher’s fine original morocco-gilt bindings.

The first English recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Kipling "is generally identified as 'the laureate of empire,' to use [George] Orwell's phrase" (Stringer, 365). This splendid collection—which includes his famous novels Captains Courageous and Kim, the delightful Just So Stories and the two celebrated Jungle Books, as well as two volumes of previously uncollected prose and poetry—stands as the definitive edition of Kipling's works; the author himself labored over the edition during his final years. "This deluxe, signed edition was published after the author's death by Macmillan and is limited to 525 sets of which 500 are for sale. Unfortunately, a substantial portion of the edition was destroyed in unbound sheets during the bombing of London in 1941" (Stewart, 577). Kipling wrote his unfinished autobiography, Something of Myself, as an epilogue for this edition.

Fine condition.