FIRST EDITIONS OF KIPLING'S JUNGLE BOOKS AND CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS, WITH KIPLING'S SIGNATURE LAID IN

KIPLING, Rudyard. The Jungle Book. WITH: The Second Jungle Book. WITH: Captains Courageous. WITH: Soldier Tales. London and New York: Macmillan, 1894-95, 1897, 1896. Four volumes. Octavo, original blue cloth gilt, top edges gilt. Housed in a custom slipcase. $8000.

First editions of Kipling's classic Jungle Books, "replete with adventure and excitement," together with a first edition of his Captains Courageous and an early printing of Soldier Tales, in the matching publisher's blue cloth, with Kipling's signature laid into the first Jungle Book.

"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). Like his two Jungle Books, Kipling wrote Captains Courageous, a 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" (Mason, 119). 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. First English edition of Captains Courageous published October 18, 1897, following the American edition of September 16. Soldier Tales was published within a month of the first printing. Livingston 104, 116, 133, 137. Small bookseller tickets.

Interiors fine, mild wear to cloth on Jungle Books, mild spotting to cloth of Captains Courageous, gilt bright on all four volumes. A handsome set of Kipling works.