Kipling and the Pirates

by David Alan Richards

FOOTNOTES

(1) Carter, John, ABC For Book Collectors, Sixth Edition with Corrections & Additions by Nicolas Barker (New Castle, DE: 1992), p. 156.


(2) [Thus, as John Carter notes carefully, “Pirated edition or piracy” is “a term commonly applied (sometimes with, sometimes without, legal accuracy) to an edition produced and marketed without the authority of, or payment to, the author.” Ibid., p. 155. Originally, copyright could belong only to the bookseller or publisher. Graham Pollard (Carter’s partner in exposing pirate and forger Thomas J. Wise, as discussed below in text accompanying notes 82-86), in his Introduction to I. R. Brussel’s Anglo-American First Editions 1826-1900 East to West (London: 1935), at p. 4, provides further perspective:

“[T]he author’s copyright is one of the more recent claims staked out in proprietary terms. It was not specifically recognized as personal property in England until 1842, nor by international agreement until 1887. As long as the work of a foreign author was not legally protected it was common property; and it was no more piratical for a publisher to print it, than it was for a peasant to graze his pigs on common land. The word piracy has secured a widespread currency from the intemperate remarks of such famous (and well-paid) authors as Samuel Richardson and Balzac, Charles Dickens and Willkie Collins. It is a gross misnomer, because abroad they had no property to steal….But their indignation at not having any property to sell, and the reactions which this had on all publishing, can only be adequately understood in proper perspective, as a stage in the growth of property in copyright.”

(International copyright did become effective in America for British authors on 1 July 1891 with the passage of the Chase Act, but even then only as to material not theretofore published.)


(3) Pinney, Thomas, ed., The Letters of Rudyard Kipling (hereinafter, LettersVolume I: 1872-89 (London: 1990), pp. 264-65. Edmonia “Ted” Hill was the wife of Samuel Alexander Hill, Professor of Physical Science at Muir College in Allahabad, and first met Kipling not long after his transfer to Allahabad to the staff of the Pioneeer; she was an American, the daughter of the President of Beaver College for Women in Pennsylvania.


(4) Pioneer, 9 November 1889, and Pioneer Mail, 13 November 1889, reprinted (omitting the ‘Curse on America’) in Cortazzi & Webb, Kipling’s Japan Collected Writings (London and Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: 1988), pp. 151-52.


(5) Kipling’s lengthy and petulant ‘curse’ against America, omitted when the Pioneer letters were collected in From Sea To Sea (Doubleday, New York, 1899; Macmillan, London, 1900), but reprinted in Ballard, Catalogue Intimate and Descriptive of My Kipling Collection (Philadelphia: 1935) (hereinafter “Ballard”), at pp. 42-3, and again in the Kipling Journal, Vol. XLIX, No. 222, June 1982, at pp. 30-31, begins

Because you steal the property of a man’s head, which is more his peculiar property than his pipe, his horse or his wife, and because you glory in your theft and have the indecency to praise or criticise the author from whom you steal, and because your ignorance, which is as dense as a pickpocket’s ignorance of anything outside his calling, leads you to trifle with his spelling, and because you print the stolen property aforesaid very vilely and uncleanly, you shall be cursed with this curse from Alaska to Florida and back again.

It continues for seven more paragraphs, and concludes:

Your hearts shall be so blinded that you shall consider each one of the curses foregoing a blessing to you as it comes about, and finally I myself will curse you more elaborately later on.


(6) No. 1702, Vol. LXV, pp. 697-98, reprinted in part in Green, Roger Lancelyn, ed., Kipling The Critical Heritage (New York: 1971), pp. 36-37, and probably written by Herbert Stephen (Pinney, Letters, I, 242, n.7). The next Saturday Review notice of a Kipling work, Andrew Lang’s unsigned review of In Black and White and Under the Deodars (reprinted in Green, pp. 44-46), did not appear until over a year later, 10 August 1889, when Kipling was travelling across the United States toward London, but the vigilant author clipped and sent a copy to Mrs. Hill from Philadelphia (10 September 1889, in Pinney, Letters 1, p. 339.


(7) Livingston, Bibliography Of The Works of Rudyard Kipling (New York: 1927) (hereinafter “Livingston”), p. 62. For quotation of the postal regulations which governed these serial publications and their “regular subscribers”, and an extended discussion of evaluating the merit of cover dates as actual publication dates, see also Pollard, note 2 supra., at pp. 26-31: he finds the Munro dates to be particularly questionable, and concludes that “Munro allotted numbers and dates to the stories that were to appear in The Seaside Library some time ahead; and that when the English serial from which the text was derived was unexpectedly prolonged, or other circumstances delayed the completion of his book, he did not trouble to alter the number or the date on the front wrapper which he had already printed.”


(8) The Munro edition is listed in Stewart, Rudyard Kipling, A Bibliographical Catalogue (Toronto: 1959) (hereinafter “Stewart”), at p. 622, where the cover date for this Seaside Library title is given as June 16, 1890, but a copy in the author’s collection bears the March 19, 1889 date. Perhaps it was reprinted with the second-dated cover.


(9) Plain Tales From The Hills, Authorized Edition (New York: 1890), Livingston 25, Stewart 19, Richards A29.


(10) Stern, Madeleine B., Imprints on History: Book Publishers and American Frontiers (Bloomington: 1956), p. 285. Lovell had purchased the Munro Library plates earlier, in 1888 (ibid., p. 265), but that purchase could not have included Plain Tales From The Hills.


(11) Stewart’s summary of the Kipling Japanese bookshop story about Munro’s Seaside Library, given at pp. 29-30 of his Bibliographical Catalogue, thus seems misled in citing Kipling collector W.M. Carpenter’s widow Lucille Russell Carpenter (in her Rudyard Kipling: A Friendly Profile [Chicago: 1942]) for the proposition that a pirated edition of Plain Tales, published by Munro, was purchased by Carpenter in 1888, and seen by Kipling in India. In Edmonia Hill’s article reminiscing about her friendship with Kipling (“The Young Kipling”, in The Atlantic Monthly, April 1936, Vol. 157, No. 4, p. 406, at p. 415, reprinted in Orel, Harold, ed., Kipling, Interviews and Recollections [Towata, New Jersey: 1983] at p. 105), she quotes a letter written to her Pennsylvania relatives from Yokohama, dated 11 May 1889: “We are sailing today for America. When Ruddy went to the shop to buy books for our Pacific trip he found an American pirated edition of his own tales. He was so furious that he stalked out of the shop and brought us nothing, to our great dismay….” However, Kipling’s own account makes no mention of an actual book, a matter he would hardly have omitted from his account if true.


(12) Carrington, Charles, Rudyard Kipling His Life and Work (London, 1955), p. 132.


(13) On Wolcott Balestier, see Lycett, Andrew, Rudyard Kipling (London: 1999), pp. 219-224, and Stern, op.cit., pp. 265-66.


(14) On John W. Lovell, see “John W. Lovell, His Social Conscience”, in Stern, op. cit., from which this account of his career is taken.


(15) Ibid., pp. 263-64.


(16) On the vignette, see also the Lovell letterhead showing the firm’s London and New York offices in Stern, op. cit., facing p. 244; on the carpet, see Lycett, op. cit., p. 224.


(17) Rudyard Kipling v. R.F. Fenno & Company (Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, 106 F. 692, 26 December 1900): affidavit dated 6 December 1900 of Vincent M. Coryell, of the firm of Lovell, Coryell, a successor firm to John W. Lovell, National Archives, New York City. See text accompanying notes 77-78.


(18) For bibliographical references, see note 9 above.


(19) Livingston note. p. 35, Stewart note p. 29.


(20) Appearing in June 1890: Martindell, E.W., A Bibliography of the Works of Rudyard Kipling (London: 1923) (hereinafter “Martindell”) 18, Livingston 26, Stewart 20, Richards A40.


(21) To Ripley Hitchcock, c. 1 April 1893, Pinney Letters 2, p. 96.


(22) Richards D1, Livingston note pp. 61-62. The Lovells passed on their printing plates for these volumes to their corporate subsidiaries and successors (United States Book Company; Frank F. Lovell Company; Lovell, Coryell; Lovell Company; and the American Publishers Corporation), as well as licensing them to a number of publishing houses which used them in wrappered ‘Series’ or ‘Library’ editions, including George Munro’s Sons (the Seaside Library—see text accompanying notes 7-11 above), Hovenden Company (the Surprise Series), J.S. Ogilvie (the Fireside Series), The National Publishing Company (the Red Letter Series), Street and Smith (the Arrow Library and the Select Library), and Henry J. Coates & Co. In many cases, the words ‘Authorized Edition’ from the Lovell plates still appeared on the title pages of these editions.


(23) Stern, op. cit., p. 264.


(24) Livingston 46 and p. 61, Stewart 42 and p. 558, Richards A39.


(25) See note 17 supra.


(26) Livingston note p. 61, Stewart 57, Richards A41.


(27) Stewart 36, Richards A42. The Coryell affidavit, note 17 supra., notes 10% royalty for this title.


(28) Livingston note p. 62, Stewart 49, Richards A45. The Coryell affidavit records 10% royalty for this title.


(29) Livingston 55, Stewart 79, Richards A48. This is described in the Coryell affidavit as “Kipling’s Poems. Pub. In cloth at 125. Royalty 10%.” Tipped into the Houghton Library copy at Harvard is an undated letter (1899?) from Kipling’s wife Carrie to the American book collector Paul Lemperly which reads: “Mr. Kipling wishes me to say in answer to your questions as to the first editions of his verses that the edition you write of was the first one authorized by him in America but there were many others published earlier without his authority.” As to most of the poems in this edition, the assertion of earlier piracies is flatly wrong, but ‘The Ballad of East and West’ and ‘The Ballad of the King’s Jest’ had indeed been published in New York City prior to this Lovell edition’s publication without Kipling’s authorization, in the M.J. Ivers’ periodical Standard Recitations series in December 1889 and March 1890, respectively.


(30) Livingston 47, Stewart 63. In the United States Book Company advertisement found in its wrappered edition of The Light That Failed, the house proclaimed: “[t]his is the only edition of ‘Plain Tales from the Hills’, ‘Soldiers Three and other stories,’ ‘The Story of the Gadsbys.’ ‘Phantom ‘Rickshaw,’ issued in America with the sanction of the author. The Coryell affidavit, note 17 supra., records a royalty of 10%.


(31) Livingston 62, Stewart 84, Richards A50. The Coryell affidavit records “10% royalty after payment to J.B. Lippincott.”


(32) Gosse copy (sold at Sotheby’s sale of Gosse’s library in London on 4-6 December 1928 as lot 444 again at Viscount Esher’s sale at Sotheby’s in London on 20-21 May 1946 as lot 1056), in the author’s collection.


(33) Livingston 63, Stewart 85, Richards A51.


(34) Publisher’s Weekly, September 20 & 27, 1890, Nos. 973-974, p. 345. Kipling’s contract with Macmillan, signed 9 July 1890, was for both the English and American editions — but subject to revision if the United States passed international copyright legislation (Watt Archive, University of North Carolina [hereinafter “Watt Archive”], Chapel Hill, 451.02).


(35) The Anderson Auction Company, New York, 0The Very Remarkable Kipling Collection made by G.M. Willamson, No. 1140 [March 17] 1915, Lot 18, p. 7.


(36) Agreement dated 7 May 1890, Watt Archive, 451.53.


(37) Martindell 40, Livingston 57, Stewart 76, Richards A43. This Harpers series was monthly, and the book is cover-dated September 1890. In his study of Harper & Brothers’ serial dating practices, Pollard found that “[I]n every case that I have examined, the date printed on the wrapper of a Harper publication can be taken to be the actual date at issue” (op. cit. Note 2 supra., p. 29)


(38) These letters were all later collected by Paul Lemperly in The Courting of Dinah Shadd. A Contribution to a Bibliography of the Writings of Rudyard Kipling (Jamaica, New York: 1898) (Livingston 56, Stewart 706), in an edition of 120 copies; this edition itself was an unauthorized edition of Kipling’s letters, of which he was probably unaware (he and Lemperly later corresponded in friendly fashion, and Kipling signed Lemperly’s copy of the first Indian edition of Departmental Ditties some 6 times).


(39) Martindell 40 note, Livingston 59, Stewart 77, Richards A46.


(40) See Catalogue of the Works of Rudyard Kipling Exhibited At The Grolier Club From February 21 to March 20, 1929 (New York: 1930) (Livingston 562, Stewart 580) (hereinafter “Grolier”) 117 (present location unknown). It should be observed that the Grolier Catalogue constituted the unauthorized first book printing of this letter and of several other letters and inscriptions, but Kipling is not known to have complained about this particular ‘pirate’ edition of his work.


(41) See text accompanying notes 34-35 supra.


(42) Martindell 51 note p. 42, Livingston 78 and note p. 62, Stewart 98, Richards A54. This is the first book edition of the stories ‘Bimi’, ‘Namgay Doola’, ‘The Recrudescence of Imray’, ‘Moti Guj-Mutineer’, ‘The Mutiny of the Mavericks’, and ‘At the End of the Passage’, only to be published five months later in England in Life’s Handicap in August 1891.


(43) English bibliographer E.W. Martindell and American book collector Solton Engel both believed Kipling’s reference was not to the Harpers’ books but to an edition of Mine Own People published by Hurst and Company (described as item 51 in Martindell’s 1923 Kipling bibliography), but Kipling’s letter refers to a book with ‘a name not of my choosing’—which could not have been a reference to a volume entitled Mine Own People — and bibliographer Flora Livingston has shown that the Hurst address in the imprint of this edition, 135 Grand Street, was not occupied by Hurst until 1894, and further that this publisher’s list did not feature Kipling until 1898 (Livingston Supp. p. 116).


(44) Martindell 44, Livingston 77 and plate and Supp. p. 115, Stewart 97, Richards A53; Prideaux, Bibliography of Robert Louis Stevenson III(10). Ivers also produced in the same series the first book edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, front cover-dated June 22, 1890; the story appeared in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine for July 1890, but was not to appear in book form in London until March 1891.


(45) Kaplan, Israel, “Kipling’s ‘American Notes’ and Mark Twain Interview”, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Vol. XLIV, 1950, pp. 69-73.


(46) Grolier 47 and Plate XIV, original now at Houghton Library, Harvard University.


(47) A table comparing the contents of the 39 letters as originally appearing in the Pioneer, the chapters in the authorized Doubleday edition of From Sea To Sea, and the material included in Ivers’ American Notes is to be found in Harbord, The Readers Guide To Rudyard Kipling’s Work, Section II (Canterbury, Kent: 1963), pp. 861-863, and a selected textual comparison of material contained in the 1891 American Notes and omitted from the 1899 From Sea to Sea may be found in Lyman, Philip, “Notes on American Notes”, Kipling Journal Vol. XLIX, No. 222, June 1982, pp. 26-32. Transcriptions of the original Pioneer letters with the omitted passages noted in red ink (probably by Luther Livingston) are at Harvard (Harvard Eng MS 838), and a copy of the two-volume American edition of From Sea To Sea with interleaved typescripts of the omitted passages may be found in the Carpenter Collection, Library of Congress.


(48) Martindell 41, Livingston 69, Stewart 91.


(49) Ballard XXV p. 61.


(50) Martindell 42, Livingston 70, Stewart 93, Richards A52.


(51) Martindell 47 and plate p. 41, Livingston 74, Stewart 95, Richards A61.


(52) Martindell 46 (with facsimile), Livingston 75, Stewart 96, Richards A62.


(53) 23 December 1891, Sussex 4/2.


(54) Indenture of 26 October 1892, Watt Archive.


(55) Copies are to be found in the British Library Kipling File, the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, the Morgan Library (2), the Lilly Library, and in the Kipling Papers, University of Sussex.


(56) The American Art Association, New York City, January 26-27, 1922, First Editions, Colored Plate Books and Manuscripts, lot 491; the frontispiece to this auction sale catalogue is a photograph of the front wrapper of this lot.


(57) Martindell 45, Livingston 73, Stewart 92, Richards A63.


(58) Copies are to be found in the British Library Kipling File (the gift of S.S. McClure and Frank N. Doubleday to Kipling), the Stewart Collection at Dalhousie University, the Berg Collection in the New York Public Library (purchased for Owen Young by Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach in 1927 for $14,000 [£2,800], the highest price ever paid for a printed work by a living author), and the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.


(59) Pollard, note 2 supra. , at p. 11.


(60) Brussel, op. cit. note 2 supra. , passim.


(61) Pollard, op. cit., note 2 supra. , at pp. 15-18,


(62) ibid., pp. 21-22. Watt exploited this final feature in printing in 1900 the copyright editions of The Elephant’s ChildThe Beginning of the Armadilloes, and The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo, which were produced under Watt’s London address imprint, but “manufactured” at the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia; in 1909, he forwarded one of the 25 Doubleday American copyright copies of A Patrol Song to the British copyright office, stating that “we publish today” (2 September 1909, Watt Archive, 452.24).


(63) The last of the Doubleday Kipling copyrights, B.E.L. (Stewart 692), appeared in 1944, produced on the authorization of Kipling’s daughter Mrs. Elsie Bambridge; a copy of the memorandum was enclosed with A.P. Watt’s letter of 2 August 1901 to Robert Collier of Collier’s Weekly in connection with the publication of ‘A Sahib’s War’: after reciting the applicable copyright law, the memorandum concludes: “A receipt must be in each case obtained for such two books from the Post-master at the Office where they are deposited [for mailing to the Library of Congress] and delivered to A.P. Watt & Son, Hastings House, Norfolk Street, Strand, London, W.C., together with an affidavit showing whether such two copies of the book were printed from type or from plates, and where in the United States the type was set. Upon the several copies of every edition of such book published there must be inserted on the title page or the page immediately following, notice of the copyright as follows: – Copyright 1901 by Rudyard Kipling.” Watt Archive, 452.22.


(64) Yeats, Alvice Whitehurst, Kipling Collections In The James McG. Stewart and The University of Texas Libraries: An Appraisal of Resources For Literary Investigation, A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, June 1961, p. 87. Still, very few seem to have been retailed in the usual course. Writing in the Revised and Enlarged Edition of his A Primer of Book-Collecting (New York: 1935), bookman John T. Winterich wrote: “Almost any rare-book dealer can show you a cluster of yellow-wrappered pamphlets containing sometimes no more than a single short poem — first American editions of Rudyard Kipling, issued by his American publishers to secure American copyright. These pamphlets became collectible at the source. Since they travel in virtually a direct route from publisher to collector, they have little chance to get lost….” (at p. 88).

Doubleday wrote Watt on 18 June 1913 about An Unrecorded Trial: “We are copyrighting it in the usual way, and publishing and selling a dozen copies on the 25th of June to preserve the copyright” (Watt Archive, 450.01). A.S. Watt later wrote of the American publisher’s process: “I think I am correct in saying that when they print this way, for copyright purposes, Messrs Doubleday Page & Co. usually manufacture from 25 to 50 copies, most of which I should think are distributed to friends and collectors of that kind of thing” (to Miss Paget, 7 October 1927, Watt Archive, 451.77).

Of Beauty Spots, Doubleday wrote Watt: “We are mailing you eight copies of ‘THE BEAUTY SPOTS’, by Mr. Kipling, after the usual distribution” (29 December 1931, Watt Archive, 452.09).

On 28 January 1938, Doubleday’s secretary Lillian Robins wrote A.S. Watt regarding one of the last copyright editions, prepared after Kipling’s death: “I take pleasure in enclosing ten copies of the Rudyard Kipling copyright pamphlet on AUTHOR’S NOTES ON THE NAMES IN THE JUNGLE BOOKS, which is that number left on hand after the usual distribution. I believe this is the usual procedure and shall depend upon you to correct me if I am in error” (10 January 1938, Watt UNC, 452.47).


(65) Winterich, John T., Collector’s Choice (New York: 1928), p. 149.


(66) Yeats, op. cit., pp. 88-94, listing the American titles, and pp. 64-65, listing the English titles.


(67) Livingston 76, Stewart 120, Richards A59. The only known copy is that deposited in the Library of Congress.


(68) The Stewart Collection at Dalhousie University comes near: ten of the thirteen English titles and ninety-one of the one hundred seventeen American titles are present. Recent inquiry at the Library of Congress did not produce the deposit copies of A Matter of Fact (1892), The Destroyers (1898), The White Man’s Burden (1899), Bridge Guard In The Karroo (1901), The Captive (1902), or The Rowers (1903).


(69) Martindell 65, Livingston 118, Stewart 137, Richards A81.


(70) Pinney Letters 2, p. 209.


(71) ibid., p. 208.


(72) Livingston 179 and Supp. p. 135, Stewart p. 631.


(73) Livingston 204 and Supp. p. 139, Stewart 193.


(74) Martindell 76, Livingston 192, Stewart p. 624.


(75) Livingston 238, Stewart 231.


(76) Martindell 75 (2nd ed.), Livingston 188 (1st ed.) and Supp. pp. 136-37 (2nd), Stewart p. 627.


(77) Livingston 27 and Supp. p. 105, Stewart 25 and p. 611.


(78) Pinney, Letters 3, p. 49.


(79) It is also not to be found in either Livingston or Stewart, but is cited by Ballard and by Harbord, op. cit., V p. 2563. A.S. Watt obliquely thanked Flora Livingston for getting it removed from the McCutcheon sale (9 March 1925, Houghton Library, Harvard), where it would have “attract[ed] undue attention.”


(80) All Gurlitz letter texts quoted in Sotheby’s, New York City, December 11, 1990, Fine Books and Manuscripts, lot 440.


(81) Alice Fleming, TLS, Kipling Papers, Sussex, 32/32.


(82) Wise to American collector John Henry Wrenn, 26 August 1899: “Kipling…I think is much over-rated, and I am certain as it is safe for a man to be, that a decade hence his books will shew a big fall from the prices now being paid for them.” Ratchford, Fanny E., ed., Letters of Thomas J. Wise to John Henry Wrenn, A Further Inquiry into the Guilt of Certain Nineteenth Century Forgers (New York: 1944), p. 172.


(83) Martindell 69, Livingston 139, Stewart 208, Ashley Library Vol. III p. 34.


(84) Carter & Pollard, An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets (London: 1934), p. 202. A.S. Watt advised Flora Livingston on 3 April 1923 in answer to her inquiry, that neither White Horses or The White Man’s Burden had been authorised in pamphlet form in England (Houghton Library, Harvard).


(85) Appended in LeGallienne, Richard, Rudyard Kipling, A Criticism (London: 1900), at p. xviii.


(86) Wise to Wrenn, 16 December 1904, Ratchford, op. cit., p. 397. Wise boasts that “[in the days of the Kipling auction sale boom] a pair of these rarities (a similar pair to this) was sold at Puttick’s for the insane price of £78.0.0.” If true, this has not been traced (such sale is not mention by Carter & Pollard, who attempted to identify all saleroom appearances of both titles), but could only have occurred in 1899 or thereafter, following Wise’s printing of The White Man’s Burden.


(87) The Works of Rudyard Kipling The Description Of A Set Of The First Editions Of His Books, In The Library Of A New York Collector, In The Library Of A New York Collector (New York, 1901) (Livingston 252, Stewart 248), at p. 76, wherein the anonymous cataloguer hazards: “This separate issue was probably printed for copyright purposes.”


(88) Martindell 78, Livingston 196, Stewart 242, Ashley Catalogue III p. 35, Carter & Pollard, op. cit., p. 203.


(89) Office copy of Martindell Bibliography at the office of A.P. Watt, Ltd., to which the annotations in the Kipling family copy were transferred with the annotater’s initials noted. The author is grateful to Linda Shaugnessy of A.P. Watt, Ltd., for permitting this review. The story of the Wise sales to and from Gorfin is detailed in Carter and Pollard, Gorfin’s Sock (Oxford: 1970), where the authors note that Gorfin never attempted any catalogue sales of the Kipling titles until 29 April 1922: “was there some apprehension of copyright action by the watchful agents of the living and notoriously persnickety author against these impudent piracies”” (p.30), and in Collins, John, The Two Forgers (Aldershot: 1992) at pp. 189-90 and 247-50.


(90) To T. Tileston Wells, with copy in the author’s collection.


(91) Livingston 252, Stewart 248. Livingston did note carefully that “it is not positively known that [the verses] are by Kipling” (p. 86). Although the poem is not repudiated by Kipling by marginal annotation to his copies (at Sussex) of Livingston’s first volume of her bibliography or of the Lloyd Chandler’s A Summary of the Works of Rudyard Kipling (New York: 1930), where there are notes of denial of authorship of other poems on surrounding pages, and Kipling’s United Services College room-mate L.C. Dunsterville describes Kipling’s success in an examination on Comus in Dunsterville’s memoir Stalky’s Reminiscences (London: 1928, p. 48, with no mention of the poem), modern scholars (Thomas Pinney, Andrew Rutherford, John Burt) have doubted the attribution of the verses to Kipling, challenging the identification of the handwriting and denigrating the quality of the verse.

Still, this Luther Livingston catalogue was well known among bibliophiles (see T.J. Wise’s citation in the text accompanying note 87 supra. ), itself constituted the only significant Kipling bibliography for the first quarter of the twentieth century (until superceded by Martindell’s work in 1923 and then Luther’s wife Flora’s first volume in 1928), and has traditionally been listed by Kipling bibliographers in the canon as a First (American) edition (Livingston and Stewart as cited above, Grolier 632, Ballard CXVII p. 161).


(92) Livingston 301, Stewart 649. Frost’s U.S. copyright no. 162774 was filed on 24 December 1906.


(93) Tolley Collection, Syracuse University.


(94) One copy is in the Kipling Papers at Sussex University, and a second was sold with its forwarding Kipling ALS in the Herman L.R. Edgar sale at American Art Association in New York, 30-31 January 1924, as lot 304.


(95) Winship, George Parker, “Recollections Of A Private Printer”, The Colophon New Series, Vol. III, No. 2, Spring 1938, p. 217.


(96) Martindell 177 (with title page facsimile), Livingston 471, Stewart 488; Ransom, Will, Private Presses and Their Books (New York, 1929) The Sign of the George No. 7 (p. 290).


(97) No statement was ever made of the number of copies of any of Winship’s Sign of the George press books (op. cit. note 95 supra. , at pp. 222-23), but in a letter to Edgar Wells of 18 February 1929 (now in the Tolley Collection at Syracuse University), Winship wrote that he could not remember how many copies he had made of Advice To The “Hat”, but “the number was not large”, and of the two cover variants (an abstract ‘Indian design’ in orange, yellow and black, and a ‘maple leaf design’ in orange, yellow and green on a gray background), he had made only 8 to 12 of the maple leaf variant, using only 2 sheets of gift-wrapping paper at 4 or 6 covers to the sheet.


(98) Ransom, op. cit. note 96 supra. , The Sign of the George No. 1 (p. 290). Copies at the Morgan Library, Houghton Library at Harvard, the Berg Collection in the New York Public Library, and in the author’s collection. The presentation copy to Owen Young in the Berg Collection, signed by the schoolboy author ‘Parker Winship’, is accompanied by a letter from the senior Winship to bookdealer Gabriel Wells, dated 25 October 1926: “I forgot that the ‘Monkeys Tale’ is a pseudo-Kipling item—the author is away at school—so there will be a slight delay in getting an autographed copy for Mr. Young. The auction record for it is $11—and I am inclined to charge $10 (less your commission) if you will explain to Mr. Young that the copies are sold only for charity-—to wit—extra pocket money for the author, away at school for the first time. Yours, GPW [postscript:] The Kipling interest is due to the fact that is was a four year old’s reaction to an over dose of ‘Just So’ stories. GPW.”


(99) See note 38 supra.


(100) Livingston 108, Stewart 482-A.


(101) Martindell 59, Livingston 109, Stewart 482-B. Copy limitation and explanation for mis-dating is given in catalogue for Mrs. Ford Maddox Hueffer sale, American Art Association, 21-23 November 1928, lot 397.


(102) Not described in the National Union Catalogue or in any Kipling bibliography or in Ransom op. cit.), or in Walker, The Works of Carl P. Rollins (New Haven: 1982), but to be included in the author’s Kipling bibliography forthcoming in 2004. Only known copy in author’s collection.


(103) Livingston Supp. p. 176, Stewart 738.


(104) Livingston 458, Stewart 477, never collected by Kipling.


(105) Not noted in Stewart or Livingston, not in National Union Catalogue; copies in Tolley Collection at Syracuse, Harry Ransom Center at University of Texas, and in author’s collection.


(106) See text accompanying note 79 supra. ; copies in the British Library Kipling File, Houghton Library at Harvard, Tolley Collection at Syracuse, Harry Ransom Center at Center at University of Texas, and the author’s collection with Harzof’s own draft catalogue description for the 15 April 1941 Baker sale at the Baker auction house; the alternative title, ‘Life of George Haven Putnam’, is not in the text , and is found only on Harzof’s envelopes enclosing the fragile leaflet; first auction appearance, American Art Association, 16-18 April 1923, lot 515.


(107) Livingston 352 (undated), Stewart 361 (as 1923). A.S. Watt wrote to Flora Livingston: “…it may be, as you say, that Mr. Gillis printed it for his own satisfaction. But is it, on that account, any less a pirate edition, if not authorised by Mr. Kipling?” (23 April 1926, Houghton Library, Harvard). Gillis Brothers (Walter and Frank) were the printers for several of the Doubleday copyright editions (The King, 1899; Cruisers, 1899, The White Man’s Burden, 1899), and in the auction sale catalogue of Walter Gillis’ library (The Anderson Galleries, New York, 25 March 1926), where 3 vellum and 3 Holland paper copies of The Glory of the Garden were sold, the piece is described (lot 94, with facsimile at p. 16) as “presumably printed to secure the American copyright, though the publishers have no record of it.”


(108) Stewart 207 and p. 630, Grolier 245, Ransom op. cit. note 96 supra. , The Sign of the George No. 10 (p. 290). Ransom notes that “After” was “printed as a matter of record and virtually suppressed on publication”; on another copy, sent by Winship with other examples of his press work to English bibliographer R. B. McKerrow (in the author’s collection), he wrote ‘Suppressed – | Confidential’ on the forwarded pamphlet and noted in his covering letter of 2 January 1927: “I hardly know why I include ‘After’—for it has been held very close—away from Collectors—I did it to remove from temptation, so that no one else could do it ‘first’. I hope nothing will be said about it—in print—until Library time.” While it is certain that Flora Livingston did indeed for her Harvard Library colleague Winship reconstruct the crossed-out verses printed here for the first time (as would seem established by her sending them to A.S. Watt (Watt to Livingston, 14 November 1930, Houghton Library, Harvard) and reprinting of them in the book-collectors’ quarterly The Colophon [Part VII, September 1931], she did not mention this Winship edition in her 1927 Bibliography or in its 1938 Supplement, and described only the Harvard manuscript from which it was made, reproduced in facsimile as the frontispiece to her 1927 volume.


(109) Livingston 501, Stewart 654, not collected by Kipling when published here. In the Kipling family-annotated copy of the Livingston Bibliography (now at Sussex), after the transcription of the note of limitation saying that the copies were ‘for private presentation’, Rudyard’s wife Carrie noted in pencil “not with his knowledge”.


(110) Livingston 502, Stewart 655, not collected by Kipling when published here; the title of the St. Nicholas magazine story of February 1893, ‘Collar-Wallah’, is here misspelled ‘Collah-Wallah’ throughout the book edition. Kipling’s lack of authorization was confirmed to Livingston in a letter from A.S. Watt dated 23 April 1926 (Houghton Library, Harvard).


(111) Livingston Supp. p. 115, Stewart p. 615.


(112) Livingston 519, Stewart 568; later collected by Kipling in The One Volume Kipling (1928).


(113) Livingston 531, Stewart 412; later collected by Kipling in the collected edition of A Diversity of Creatures in the Sussex (Vol. IX, 1937) and Burwash (Vol. IX, 1941) Editions.


(114) Livingston 538, Stewart 569, collected by Kipling the year before in The One Volume Kipling (1928).


(115) Livingston Supp. p. 99, Stewart 571, printing 3 letters and a speech.


(116) Livingston 561, Stewart 576 and p. 627; while it purports to be a sale catalogue (on which fabulously high prices were placed, lest anyone buy anything), this is really a checklist of the Carpenter Collection later presented to the Library of Congress, which includes the first publication of several inscriptions and letter extracts.


(117) Livingston 560, Stewart 656, first collected by Kipling in the Sussex (Vol. XXX, 1938) and Burwash (Vol. XXIII, 1941) Editions.


(118) Stewart 547 note p. 400 and p. 629: an excerpt from Kipling’s address at McGill University, Montreal, on 17 October 1907, and collected by Kipling in A Book of Words (1927) as ‘Values in Life’.


(119) Livingston 504, Stewart 641; Schubert, A Bibliography of The Publications of the Rowfant Club Part Two1925-61, pp. 37-8, where it is identified as “since its publication the most sought-after volume on the Rowfant list”; Hass, Bruce Rogers: A Bibliography 129; collected by Kipling in the Sussex (Vol. XXIX, 1938) and Burwash (Vol. XXIII, 1941) Editions.


(120) Kipling’s letter of permission to Lemperly (reproduced in the Kipling Journal, December 1944, at p. 6), framed and glazed, was thereafter exhibited in the Rowfant Club premises, according to H. Jack Lang’s The Rowfant Manuscripts (Cleveland: 1978).


(121) See note 22 supra.


(122) Livingston 292 with title page facsimile, Stewart 472 and p. 603, Walker (op. cit. note 102 supra. ) 42.


(123) Livingston 293 and Supp. p. 150, Stewart 472-B, Cary, A Bibliography of the Village Press (1938) (hereinafter “Cary”) 27.


(124) Livingston 293 and Supp. p. 150, Stewart 472-A, Cary 28.


(125) Martindell 120 (incorrectly as “first separate issue”), Livingston 294, Stewart 472-C.


(126) Letter to Aleck Watt from Doubleday dated 18 February 1919 on the conclusion to the “long drawn out controversy with Bartlett”, and Assigment by Bartlett to Kipling dated 31 January 1919, Watt Archive, 451.10.


(127) This is confirmed in the McCutcheon sale catalogue, American Art Association, New York, 20-21 April 1925, lot 331: “Bartlett printed 1000 copies, but owing to copyright complications was obliged to destroy all but fifty or sixty copies.”


(128) Martindell 112 and plate p. 82, Livingston 328, Stewart 324.


(129) Harvard Eng. MS 875.1.


(130) Martindell 113 and plate p. 83, Livingston 329, Stewart 325.


(131) Livingston p. 451, Stewart p. 568 (as the ‘American Copyright Edition’).


(132) The ten were the six Indian Railway Library titles (in two volumes), Plain Tales From The HillsThe Light That FailedLife’s Handicap, and Departmental DittiesBallads and Barrack-Room Ballads.


(133) Watt Archive, 452.53.


(134) Idem.


(135) Kipling, Something of Myself (London: 1937), p. 37, describing the newly married couple’s resolve upon learning while on honeymoon in Japan that Rudyard’s bank had failed: “There was an instant committee of ways and means, which advanced our understanding of each other more than a cycle of solvent matrimony.”


(136) Watt Archive, 452.53.


(137) Carter, op. cit., pp. 98-99.


(138) ibid., p. 100.


(139) See note 43 supra.


(140) Martindell 89, Livingston 239, Stewart 240; Kipling Journal No. 35, September 1935, p. 98. Flora Livingston sent the Watts the first copy they had seen in October 1926 (W.P. Watt to Flora Livingston, 26 October 1926, Houghton Library, Harvard).


(141) Winterich, John T., Collector’s Choice (New York: 1928), at p. 173: “…Mrs. Livingston has established what I hope will be a bibliographic precedent by listing both English and American first editions, regardless of strict stop-watch precedence.”


(142) A.S. Watt to Flora Livingston, 19 November 1923, Houghton Library, Harvard.


(143) A.S. Watt to Flora Livingston, 9 July 1924, Houghton Library, Harvard.


(144) A.S. Watt to Flora Livingston, 22 January 1925, Houghton Library, Harvard.


(145) A.S. Watt to Flora Livingston, 26 March 1925, Houghton Library, Harvard.


(146) Houghton Library, Harvard.


(147) In presentation copy to C.F.P. Froom, in author’s collection.


(148) Livingston Supp. pp. 183-90, Stewart pp. 495-96 (declining to list them in the main text as “much less important than ordinary unauthorized issues”, but describing them in Appendix F at pp. 633-37 on the very last pages of that bibliography). Ballard discusses their printing in his Catalogue, at pp. 70-77.


(149) Yeats, op. cit., p. 56.


(150) A.S. Watt to Flora Livingston, 1 September 1936, Houghton Library, Harvard.


(151) Stewart, pp. 495-96.