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Rudyard Kipling, Rudyard Kipling’s Verse, Inclusive Edition 1885–1918, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1919

xiv, 783 pages; publisher’s original quarter parchment over dark green paper-covered boards; top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Title page printed in red and black with publisher’s device (pre-Nazi-era swastika, a symbol Kipling adopted from Indian culture). Spine with gilt border rules and panels (gilt lettering faint); uncut edges; endpapers unwatermarked, likely as issued.
9.5 x 6.5 x 2 in (24.5 x 16.5 x 4.8 cm)

Limited "Autograph Edition," one of 250 copies signed by the author, this being No. 211.

DUTY, EMPIRE, AND ELEGY: SIGNED LIMITED EDITION OF KIPLING’S VERSE, 1885–1918

This is the Autograph Edition of Rudyard Kipling’s Verse, Inclusive Edition 1885–1918, a monumental compilation of poetry from the Nobel Laureate and one of the most influential voices of the British Empire. Published shortly after World War I, this folio volume includes all of Kipling’s major poetic works—such as If, Gunga Din, Recessional, The White Man’s Burden, and Danny Deever—as well as lesser-known verse revealing his preoccupations with duty, sacrifice, the soldier’s life, and the burdens of empire.

What makes this edition especially significant is its signed limitation page, bearing Kipling’s autograph and a handwritten limitation number ("211"). The use of the swastika—then a common Indo-Aryan symbol of good fortune adopted by Kipling—appears here prominently, before its appropriation in the Nazi era. The book was designed in the Arts and Crafts tradition, with wide margins, hand-cut pages, and elegant red-and-black type. It was printed on fine handmade paper and bound for presentation to collectors and admirers of Kipling's poetic oeuvre.

This edition is particularly significant because of its timing—it appeared just after the First World War, a conflict in which Kipling’s only son, John, was killed. Several later poems in this volume bear the grief and gravitas of personal loss and national mourning, offering a powerful contrast to the confidence and bravado of his earlier colonial verse.

It stands as an essential reference for any collector of Kipling or of 20th-century British verse more broadly.

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