"AN HONORABLE PLACE IN ANY LIBRARY OF CHILDREN'S BOOKS": FIRST EDITIONS OF KIPLING'S JUNGLE BOOKS

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 together in a custom clamshell box. $6900.

First editions of Kipling's classic Jungle Books, "replete with adventure and excitement."

"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). "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. Bookplates.

Light scattered foxing to interiors, only slight rubbing and toning to spines, gilt bright. A handsome set in extremely good condition.