SOLDIER TALES

London and New York: Macmillan and Co, 1896. FIRST EDITION. 190 x 122 mm. (7 1/2 x 4 3/4"). viii, 172 pp., with the half title.
Publisher's blue cloth with gilt pictorial design on upper cover and on flat spine, all edges gilt. Vignette headpieces and tailpieces, frontispiece and 20 plates by A. S. Hartrick. Verso of front free endpaper with ink owner's inscription of Constance Reynolds dated 14 February 1898. Stewart 157. ◆Spine a bit cocked and faded, with a little fraying at tail edge, extremities lightly rubbed, a couple of small stains to upper cover, text slightly open at gutter at gathering D, occasional mild marginal foxing or faint fore-edge dampstain to plates (not affecting image), but a very good copy, clean and fresh with nothing approaching a fatal defect.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is most famous for his works portraying the lives of both natives and colonialists on the Indian subcontinent. An opponent of female suffrage and a staunch supporter of British imperialism, Kipling nonetheless had great sympathy for the traditions of India as well as the literary ability and desire to present it as a land of beauty and enchantment. He was born in Bombay, where his father ran a school of art, and he lived in India until the age of six. He was sent to school in England, but chose to return to the East at 18. His father had become director of the Lahore Museum in what is now Pakistan, and Rudyard became a journalist for the "Lahore Civil and Military Gazette." His first two collections of stories, "Plain Tales from the Hills" and "Soldiers Three," depict the lives of the British military in India; he proved to be a prolific author, writing novels, tales for children and adults, and many poems. Kipling's wife was American, and they lived for a time in Vermont, but from 1896 the couple settled in England. Among his many honors are a Nobel Prize (1907) and the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Literature (1926), which had previously only been awarded to Scott, Meredith, and Hardy..