Books

1901. [in 1901 dust jacket] London: Macmillan and Co., 1901. 2 pp undated ads. Original red cloth with Ganesha device in gilt, with dust jacket. First English Edition of the book that "is acknowledged as Kipling's masterpiece in fiction... The novel is the finest written about the India of the British Empire" [CGEL]. 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 illustrations are by John Lockwood Kipling, the author's father. The American edition is considered to have been published earlier (though in the same month as the English one). As with most of Kipling's British editions published by Macmillan, the binding is red cloth with in gilt the "Ganesha" device -- an elephant's head with a swastika (the latter had been a ubiquitous symbol in India for millennia; its use ceased in the early 1930s, when events in Germany gave the symbol a whole…

Kim is a novel by Rudyard Kipling. It is set against the backdrop of the Great Game, the political conflict between Russia and Britain in Central Asia.