For Little Children
Just So Stories For Little Children
Macmillan, 1902.
First edition, binding in the secondary state with the less fragile white blocking. Original pictorial red cloth with white and black design, in rare buff pictorial dustwrapper blocked in red. Illustrated throughout with full-page woodcut plates by the author. A near fine copy with remnants of tape to the endpapers and two ownership inscriptions to the front free endpaper, in a near fine dustwrapper with a 3cm square chip to the front flap, some trivial wear in places and a tiny tape repair to the head of the spine, excepting these minor faults an exceptionally well preserved example of this rare dustwrapper, seldom found so clean with such vivid red printing to the cover and spine.
The author's famous book of fantastic accounts of how various natural phenomena came about. They use a comically elevated style inspired by the formal speech of India, full of long and improbable-sounding words, some of them made up. From publication, the book became regarded as one of the classics of children's literature.
"Mr. Kipling's Just So Stories is the only recent original book for children whose standing in this connection appears to be fairly sure. It does for very little children much what the Jungle Books did for older ones." H.W. Boynton (The Atlantic Review, 1903).
Stock ID: 45963
£15,000.00
