The Light That Failed

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 treat the Macmillan London edition of March 1891, which restored Kipling's intended fifteen-chapter tragic text, as the definitive first edition of the novel Kipling meant to publish.