Stalky & Co by KIPLING, Rudyard - 1915

Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, Inc, 1915. Book. Fine. Hardcover. Later printing (1899). [xiii], 310pp, Kipling's long-term swastica trademark on half-title, frontis illustration, poem (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), chapter headings include "In Ambush", Slaves of the Lamp (I), An Unsavory Interlude, The Impressionists, The Moral Reformers, A Little Prep, The Flag of Their Country, The Last Term, Slaves of the Lamp (II). 12mo/18cm. Dark green pictorial cloth with image of sailing corsair on front board, small edge nick and light edgewear, internally fine. Originally published in serial form in 1897-98, this is a rollicking story of three untamed teenagers in a 19th century school meant to prepare future officers for the British Army. Beetle, Stalky and Turkey are the three unruly characters at a school at Westward Ho!, Devon patterned after the United Services College which Kipling himself attended and parts of him can be seen in the character of Beetle. Stalky is clearly patterned after Lionel Charles Dunsterville (1865-1946), later a British Major General, made famous by his leadership of the elite "Dunsterforce" moved across Iran in late 1917 to prevent a feared Turko-German attack on India. Turkey is patterned after George Charles Beresford (1865-1938) artist, photographer & antique dealer. In fact direct connections between the fictional characters and the particular lives of the three individuals as students are relatively few. The book is dedicated to Cormel Price, Head-Master, United Services College, Westward Ho, Bideford, North Devon, 1874-1894. See Livingston 215..