Rewards and Fairies
Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1919. 4 black and white plates, including frontispiece. Original cloth over boards. Octavo. xii, 344 pages.
Kipling's collection of historical fantasy tales intertwined with the contemporary adventures of two children, David and Una, who are able to meet historical figures with the help of Puck, a fairy from English folklore. The stories are complimented by poems that echo their themes.
The first edition of this collection (in 1910) was the first appearance in book form of Kipling's most famous poem, "If---", which appears here on pages 181-182. It was a superb literary example of Victorian-era stoicism and quickly came to embody the English "stiff upper lip."
Though a somewhat later printing, this 1919 copy comes with the uncommon dust jacket.
Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Some light browning to endpapers, a bit of browning the margins of second plate and facing page, and a contemporaneous prior owner name and date neatly penned on front free endpaper. Jacket has mild edge wear, shallow chipping at spine ends, chip to lower edge of rear panel approximately 3/4" x 1", and a few mild stains to jacket spine. Bound in dark green cloth with spine and upper board stamped in gilt and black, top edge gilt. A lovely copy, and quite scarce in a dust jacket of any condition.
Item #1606
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