KIPLING, Rudyard.

If.

Garden City, New York: Doubleday Page, 1910.

$2,000.00

In Stock Item Number: RRB-153422

Custom Clamshell Box

Hand made by the Harcourt Bindery. ~90 days

+$500

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"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you... yours is the earth and everything that's in it, and - which is more - you'll be a man, my son!" First Separate Edition of Rudyard Kipling's If

First separate edition of Kipling’s most enduring poem, preceding the first British separate edition by four years. Small oblong duodecimo, original illustrated boards, eight double leaves, the top edges uncut except on one, each double leaf within a dark green rule-and-dot border, the text printed in black with green initial letters. The publisher’s note on page 5 is found in four variants of unknown priority, this copy with variant ii. An early owner has pasted three printed poems onto rear blank leaves, two of them parodies of “If” and one a printing of Kipling’s “The Vampire,” none affecting the text though they have browned the facing blank pages over time. In near fine condition. An attractive copy of this uncommon little book.

"If—" first appeared in the "Brother Square Toes" chapter of the book Rewards and Fairies, a collection of Kipling's poetry and short-story fiction, published in 1910. In his posthumously published autobiography, Something of Myself (1937), Kipling said that, in writing the poem, he was inspired by the character of Leander Starr Jameson, leader of the failed Jameson Raid against the Transvaal Republic to overthrow the Boer Government of Paul Kruger. The failure of that mercenary coup d’état aggravated the political tensions between Great Britain and the Boers, which led to the Second Boer War (1899–1902).As an evocation of Victorian-era stoicism—the "stiff upper lip" self-discipline, which popular culture rendered into a British national virtue and character trait, "If—" remains a cultural touchstone.