Just So Stories Signed by Rudyard Kipling First Edition

Toronto: George S. Morang & Co., Limited. 1902. Rudyard Kipling. 1st Edition. Signed by Author. From TBCL’s Children’s Bookcase. Kipling, Rudyard. JUST SO STORIES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN. Signed. Illustrated by the Author. Toronto: George S. Morang & Co., Limited. 1902. Unique Copy. First Canadian Edition. Sm. 4to. 249p. With 22 plates & many in-text illustrations. Cream cloth-covered boards with titles & illustrations on the spine & upper cover stamped in black.

An extraordinary example with three key manuscript highlights tipped-in: 1 – Opposite page 141, Kipling on a piece of club size stationery has written out, in fact decoded the runes of Taffimai in 2 columns of 18 lines with the added “This is the identical tusk-on-uitch the tale of Taffimai ouas ritten. Etched by the author. / See Page 141 / Just So Stories / Double Day Page Edn 1902.” 2 – Tipped opposite page 197, on a piece of club size stationery, Kipling has deciphered the runes on the Mutton Bone illustrated in the story: The Cat That Walked By Himself. Inscribed: “On the mutton bone / page 197. Just So Stories”. Two columns of decoding followed by: ” I Rudyard Kipling drew this but because there was no mutton bone in the house I faked the anatomy from memory. R.K.” 3 – One page als [true copy neatly written & signed in blue fountain pen] on the letterhead of the Canadian Copper Company, Sussex, dated Nov. 30th 1912, addressed to: David H. Brown esq. ” Dear Sir / Many thanks for your amusing letter of the 12th. I am sorry that any of my handicraft should have disturbed your dinner. I should imagine it would be quite hopeless to find one in the small drawing what the runes meant but I have looked up the original pictures and found that on the cross bar of the H, I put myself on record as having also written all the plays ascribed to Mrs. Gallop. I hope now that you and your friends will be able to return to their respective vocations. / Yours very sincerely / Rudyard Kipling”.

An extremely good example showing light use. [Stewart 261. Notes binding is usually brown/orange cloth]. First published in London, by Macmillan in 1902 this is the uncommon Canadian edition of Kipling’s most famous collection of twelve animal stories & twelve poems, including “How the Camel Got His Hump” and “How the Leopard Got His Spots,” “How the Whale Got his Throat,” “The Elephant’s Child,” & “The Butterfly That Stamped.” “Just So Stories has achieved nursery immortality because a genius has married two of the most tried and trusted media – the fable and the fairy-story” (Muir, 107). Stewart [260]. BMC No.1 [1984]; ‘Edwardian Children’s Books’. (30820).