Price: US$3840.87 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: FIRST EDITION, tall narrow 4to, half red morocco over marbled boards, original light brown printed wrappers that double as an Indian civil service envelope preserved, marbled endpapers, bookplates of William Garth and William Marchbank, Lahore, the Civil and Military Press, 1886. The First Edition of Kiplings first published work. Previous work was either printed privately, offprints or collaborative books. Kipling was sub-editor of the Civil and Military Gazette, an Anglophone newspaper reporting from Lahore on the life of the Civil Service and the Indian Army in Punjab. Thanks to his occupation and his family's social standing he had many opportunities to explore the full range of life in India. He remained keenly observant of the thronging spectacle of native India, which had engaged his interest and affection from earliest childhood. He was quickly filling the journals he worked for with prose sketches and light verse. Kipling began inserting his own poems under the heading of Departmental Ditties into the newspaper, and then produced this edition, made up to look like a bundle of civil service memoranda. Richards A7; Stewart 8; Livingston 22
Seller: Bruce Marshall Rare Books, Cheltenham, United Kingdom
KIPLING, Rudyard. Departmental Ditties and Other Verses. The Civil and Military Gazette Press, 1886.
Price: US$4000.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First edition. 10 3/4" x 4 1/4". Publisher's printed tan wrappers in the form of a governmental envelope as issued, with envelope flap intact. Minor notations in ink on contents page. Very good (staples are rusted). Enclosed in a modern full brown morocco slipcase by Stikeman. With the 1894 bookplate of Edwin Holden; and Frank Hogan bookplate on the folding chemise. Text printed on one side of leaf only. Livingston 22
Seller: Houle Rare Books/Autographs/ABAA/PADA, Palm Springs, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$4000.00 + shipping
Description: First Edition of Kipling's first published book. Tall narrow 4to. The first edition of Kipling's first published work. Kipling was made sub-editor of the Civil and Military Gazette, an Anglophone newspaper in Lahore, upon his return to India after his time at the United Service College; this volume collects his poetry printed therein. Richards A7; Stewart 8; Livingston 10 Bound original light brown printed wrappers in the form of an Indian civil service envelope, overlapping flap. Laid into red morocco spine and cloth slipcase and chemise. The George Ulizio copy First Edition of Kipling's first published book.
Seller: James Cummins Bookseller, ABAA, New York, NY, U.S.A.
KIPLING Rudyard. Departmental Ditties and other Verses. , 1886.
Price: US$4801.09 + shipping
Description: First edition. Tall narrow 4to., original light brown printed wrappers in the form of an Indian civil service envelope, overlapping flap. Lahore, the Civil and Military Press. ?The English in India had never seen themselves represented in quite this way, and it was all unmistakably done with a remarkable skill and wit.? This can claim to be Kipling's first independent commercial publication, as its antecedents were either privately printed, offprints, or collaborative books. The author was only 21 at the time, and had already spent four years as one of two Englishmen on the staff of The Civil and Military Gazette, which reported from Lahore on the life of the Civil Service and the Indian Army in Punjab. This gave him ?a perfect position from which to acquire knowledge about almost everything that might be going on in Lahore. He was not an insider: to be that, one had to be a civil servant or a solder, and Kipling was neither . . . as a journalist, he could talk to anyone, and since he was neither civil nor military he had no institutional rules to follow.? Kipling began inserting his own poems under the heading of Departmental Ditties into the newspaper, and then produced this really rather brilliantly conceived edition, made up to look like a bundle of civil service memoranda. By no means anodyne, many of the poems act as comic exposés of the colonial class: Jack Barrett gets sent to Quetta, which ?killed him out hand?, by the man who marries his widow; Sleary proposes to the ungainly daughter of Judge Boffkin, who is pleased to get her off his hands and promotes Sleary to a well paid post, at which Sleary dumps her (by simulating epilepsy) and returns home on a good pension to marry his real love; Exeter Battleby Tring, despite a life devoted to railways, is denied the job of managing the line by the ?Little Tin Gods?, who silence his mouth with rupees, keeping their Circle intact by preferring one of the right social class. Overall light soiling and traces of dampstaining to wrappers, but an exceptionally good, unrestored copy: although the pink ribbon that originally passed through the slit on the flap is now lacking, the flap itself and its very vulnerable hinge to the overlapping flap is unrestored and intact. Rare in this condition, housed in a fine early 20th-century pull off case with an inner chemise. Richards A7, citing 500 copies printed. All quotations from Richards & Pinney's Kipling and his first Publisher. Rivendale Press. 2001. .
Seller: Maggs Bros. Ltd ABA, ILAB, PBFA, BA, London, United Kingdom
Kipling, Rudyard. Departmental Ditties. Civil and Military Press Gazette, Lahore, 1886.
Price: US$7500.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First edition of Kipling's first published book. Bound in publisher's original tan printed wrappers imitating the form of an Indian civil service envelope with an overlapping flap. Wear to spine and a short split at the bottom end of the overlapping flap fold. Kipling was serving as sub-editor of the Civil and Military Gazette, and this volume collects his poetry which was published in the paper. Housed in a chemise custom dark blue straight grain morocco slipcase.
Seller: Burnside Rare Books, ABAA, Portland, OR, U.S.A.