The American edition is considered to have been published earlier (though in the same month as the English one). The illustrations are by John Lockwood Kipling, the author's father. It follows the adventures of an orphan son of a British soldier who is raised by an Indian woman, becomes a disciple to a Lama, and ultimately becomes an undercover agent as well. The novel is the finest written about the India of the British Empire'. First English Edition of the book that 'is acknowledged as Kipling's masterpiece in fiction. Original red cloth with Ganesha device in gilt, with dust jacket. Spines expertly refurbished, contents clean. for Macmillan, spines lettered in gilt within raised bands, double gilt rule to covers, top edges gilt on the rough, other edges uncut as issued, marbled endpapers, twin gilt and blind rules to turn-ins, printed on handmade paper, the first sheet of each signature bearing a Ganesha watermark. Original full russet niger morocco by James Burn & Co. Though the edition was published posthumously, Kipling had signed the limitation sheets prior to his death on 18 January 1936. One result of this exaggerated scarcity is that the Sussex Edition is now among the most prized and most expensive of all modern editions' (ibid., Vol.

Set in Bembo type on hand-made paper, bound in Nigerian goatskin, and limited to 525 sets, the Sussex Edition did not begin publication until 1937 sales were slow in those depression years, and a large number of the unbound sheets lying in a London warehouse was destroyed by German bombs.

The selection, fuller than that of any other edition, was the work of Kipling, and he saw the proofs of at least 21 of the edition's 35 volumes before his death. The idea for the edition went back to 1928 and work was begun by 1930.

the Sussex Edition of his works, undertaken by Macmillan as a monument to one of the firm's most profitable authors. In his last years and with his health failing Kipling continued the gathering-up of existing material that resulted in 'the great retrospective work. The Sussex Edition, number 513 of a limited edition of 525 sets signed by the author on the limitation leaf of vol.

Kim kipling first edition