Rudyard Kipling First Editions

• Departmental Ditties and Other Verses — 1886 · Civil and Military Gazette Press, LahoreKipling's first separately published book. The true first is the Lahore issue printed in narrow octavo and bound in printed light-brown wrappers made to imitate an official Indian Civil Service envelope, with an overlapping flap bearing a seal device, the leaves stapled as issued and a ribbon passed through a slit in the flap. Imprint of the Civil and Military Gazette Press. The edition was small (about 500…. The 1886 Lahore envelope-format issue is the true first. Later enlarged editions (the second edition printed at Calcutta later in 1886, then the London editions) are secondary and were reset and expanded. Later enlarged Calcutta and London editions are not the Lahore envelope-format first; they are reset and add poems.
• Plain Tales from the Hills — 1888 · Thacker, Spink and Co.First edition printed and published in Calcutta, 1888 — Kipling's first prose collection. Imprint reads 'Thacker, Spink and Co.' (Calcutta) on the title page, with W. Thacker & Co. as the London agent. Collation pp. xii, 283, with a 32-page publisher's catalogue dated December 1887 at the rear. A noted first-issue point is the page number on page 192 printed at the inner edge of the top margin. Issued in…. The Calcutta Thacker, Spink 1888 issue is the true first, to be distinguished from the 1890 Macmillan (London) edition. The 32-page December 1887 catalogue and the page-192 page-number placement are the practical bibliographic points. The 1890 London Macmillan edition and all later reprints are not the Calcutta first.
• The Light That Failed — 1890 · United States Book Co., successor to John W. Lovell Co.The earliest commercially available book printing was issued by the United States Book Company (successor to John W. Lovell Co.), New York, in the pictorial wrappers of its Westminster Series; a copy was deposited for copyright at the Library of Congress on 12 November 1890, and the wrapper is cover-dated 5 December 1890, appearing shortly before Lippincott's Monthly Magazine carried the same text in its January…. An even rarer six-copy copyright pamphlet, arranged in London by Wolcott Balestier as Lovell's agent and deposited at the British Museum on 7 November 1890, technically preceded the Lovell/U.S. Book Co. New York printing by about a week but was never placed on public sale, so bibliographers treat it as a copyright formality rather than a true published edition. Kipling bibliographers and collectors generally….
• Life's Handicap — 1891 · Macmillan and Co.First published in August 1891 by Macmillan and Co., printed by R. & R. Clark of Edinburgh, collecting twenty-seven stories, most drawn from British India, including 'The Man Who Was' and 'The City of Dreadful Night.' The first edition is octavo, 351 pages plus an 8-page publisher's catalogue. The first-issue sheets lack the word 'October' on the copyright page, a point that distinguishes them from the September…. Reprints from later in 1891, with 'October' added to the copyright page, are not the first issue.
• Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses — 1892 · Methuen & Co., LondonFirst edition, first impression: Methuen & Co., London, 1892 — the title that made Methuen's reputation. Issued in two forms. The trade issue: 12mo, collating xix or xx, 208, [16] pages, the final sixteen pages being the publisher's advertisement catalogue bound in at the rear; publisher's maroon buckram/cloth, lettered in gilt on the spine with gilt decoration to the upper cover, vignette illustration to the…. UK precedes US. Methuen & Co. (London), 1892, is the true first for both the trade and large-paper issues, and the sources consulted do not establish precedence between those two issues, so neither should be described as preceding the other. American printings dated 1892 follow the Methuen: the Macmillan Company (New York) issue is recorded as the first authorized American edition, and unauthorized American…. No book-club edition — the book predates book-club publishing. The reprint risk is instead sheer volume: the book ran through many Methuen impressions and editions from the 1890s onward, most in broadly similar bindings, and later printings are common while the first is not. Check the title page and its verso for the 1892 date and for the absence of any edition or impression statement, and confirm the 16-page….
• Many Inventions — 1893 · D. Appleton and CompanyD. Appleton and Company of New York published Many Inventions on 31 May 1893, ahead of the Macmillan London edition, which followed later the same year. Issuing the American edition first was consistent with the 1891 Chace Act, under which foreign authors needed United States manufacture and first or simultaneous American publication to secure United States copyright, a practice Kipling followed closely in this…. The Appleton New York edition of 31 May 1893 has bibliographic priority over the Macmillan London edition; American-first or near-simultaneous publication was Kipling's standard practice in this period to secure United States copyright under the 1891 Chace Act.
• The Jungle Book — 1894 · Macmillan and Co.First edition in original blue cloth, pictorially decorated and lettered in gilt with an elephant-and-rider design and gilt top edge. Illustrations by J. L. Kipling, W. H. Drake, and P. Frenzeny. Dated 1894 on the title page. Macmillan and Co., London. The London Macmillan 1894 edition and the New York Century Co. 1894 edition were issued very close together (reported as the same day), so precedence between them is not clean; the British Macmillan issue is conventionally treated as the first. The two are easily distinguished: Macmillan in blue pictorial cloth, Century in olive-green cross-hatched cloth with a dust jacket. Later Macmillan printings within 1894-95 (so-called later impressions) differ from the first; distinguish the first impression from subsequent printings, and from the Century Co. American issue.
• The Second Jungle Book — 1895 · The Century Co.Two editions, both collected; name both. US (true first): The Century Co., New York, 1895, printed by the De Vinne Press — decorated cloth with the central elephant device stamped in BLACK (the inverse of the London edition's gilt), illustrations after John Lockwood Kipling; two binding variants are recorded, green cloth and terra-cotta cloth, with no priority established between them, and an original…. Census claim CORRECTED. The census asserts that Macmillan (London) 1895 precedes the Century (New York) issue; the reverse is true. The Century Co. edition was published three days BEFORE the Macmillan London edition, making the American the true first by date, and dealer cataloguing further records that the American text carries a number of alterations against the English. The Macmillan London 1895 is the first…. The title predates the book-club era and no book-club issue exists. The dominant reprint is the Macmillan (London) Standard Edition, published and frequently reprinted between 1899 and 1950 — it is in this and every other reprint that the restored 'King's Ankus' text appears (at p. 173 of the Standard Edition), so any copy with the complete ending is not the first English printing. Later Century printings are….
• Captains Courageous — 1897 · The Century Co.The Century Co. of New York published the first book edition of Captains Courageous in 1897, about a month ahead of the Macmillan London edition, following serialization in McClure's Magazine that began in November 1896. The Century first edition collates viii + 323 pages, is illustrated with plates by I. W. Taber, and is bound in green cloth gilt-lettered with pictorial stamping in gilt, black, and orange. The…. The Century Co. New York edition of 1897 preceded the Macmillan London edition by about a month and holds bibliographic priority as the true first edition; the illustrated Macmillan English first edition is nonetheless the state most commonly sought by collectors of Kipling's British canon.
• Stalky & Co. — 1899 · Macmillan and Co.Macmillan and Co. first published Stalky & Co. in October 1899, with a second printing following in November of the same year. The first-edition binding is red cloth with a gilt medallion on the front cover showing Kipling's 'elephant head' device, designed by his father Lockwood Kipling, depicting an elephant's head bearing a lotus in its trunk together with a fylfot (swastika), then used by Kipling as a…. The October 1899 first printing and the November 1899 second printing are distinguished by points recorded in the standard Kipling bibliographies (Livingston, Stewart); collectors should check a copy's specific state against those references rather than assume any 1899 Macmillan copy is the first printing.
• Kim — 1901 · Doubleday, Page & Co.Two editions, both collected; name both. US (true first): Doubleday, Page & Co., New York, 1 October 1901 — green ribbed cloth, lettered in gilt with a boat stamped in black on the front board and spine, top edge gilt, other edges untrimmed; ten black-and-white plates including the frontispiece, reproducing bas-reliefs by the author's father, John Lockwood Kipling. English: Macmillan & Co., London, 17 October…. Census claim CORRECTED. The census asserts the London Macmillan as the true first and calls the US 'arguably first by days'; both halves are wrong. The Kipling Society's Readers' Guide, corroborated by dealer consensus, gives Doubleday, Page & Co. (New York) 1 October 1901 and Macmillan & Co. (London) 17 October 1901 — the American edition precedes by sixteen days. That is a documented two-week interval, not an…. A 'Second American Edition' followed within 1901 per the Kipling Society, and later Doubleday, Page and Doubleday, Doran printings are common. The principal reprint traps are Macmillan's long-running Uniform and Pocket editions, published and frequently reprinted from 1899 into the 1950s: they carry the same Ganesha device and red or blue cloth but bear a series designation and a later date. Note carefully that….
• Just So Stories — 1902 · Macmillan and Co., LimitedLondon: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1902; the title page reads "Just So Stories For Little Children By Rudyard Kipling Illustrated by the Author London Macmillan and Co., Limited 1902 All rights reserved". Quarto, published October 1902, with 22 full-page plates by Kipling and his own vignettes through the text. Livingston's collation (no. 267): 4 leaves, pp. 252 — blank leaf, fore-title, title, contents (4…. The census claim is confirmed: the London Macmillan edition of October 1902 is the true first. Livingston's bibliography (1927) enters it in her chronology of first editions as "1902: Just So Stories, 257", and records at no. 268 that a copy of the London edition was sent to Doubleday, Page & Co. in New York from which to print the American edition — establishing English priority on documentary grounds rather…. No book-club edition is documented for 1902. The chief reprint traps are Macmillan's own later impressions from the same setting, on which the 1902 title-page date can persist — check the title-page verso for a reprint or impression statement. The second binding state is routinely mis-sold as a later printing when it is in fact a first-impression state, and conversely a flaked copy is sometimes written off as….

More Literary Fiction (US) & Award Winners shelves: Russell Banks, Sally Rooney, Salman Rushdie, Samuel R. Delany, Sandra Cisneros, Sarah J. Maas.

← All authors · All genres · part of the First-Edition Identification resource.