Kim.

KIPLING, Rudyard (1865-1936).

London: Macmillan and co., 1901. [Adventure thriller] FIRST EDITION, first impression. Octavo (21 x 14cm), pp.[8] 413 [3]. With 10 black and white illustrated plates. Publisher's red cloth, gilt titles to spine, and gilt elephant [Ganesha] motif stamped to upper cover, top edge gilt. With the extremely scarce dust-wrapper, printed in red on grey paper stock. This is the correct jacket listing fourteen 'uniform edition' titles starting with 'Kim' (without printing statement) and ending with The Naulahka. Contents clean, no inscriptions, light spotting to endpapers, bump at crown, jacket gently toned, with light chipping to top edge and a long archivally repaired tear to rear panel, extending to spine. Shows extremely well, housed in a leather-spined cloth clamshell. Kipling's famous Indian adventure, and one of the author's most enduring thrillers. Basis for the classic 1950 movie starring Erroll Flynn and Dean Stockwell. An early spy novel which undoubtedly influenced Ian Fleming and a whole generation of spy writers; the British spy Harold 'Kim' Philby was so nicknamed by his father after elements from this text. This is novelist Michael Sadleir's copy, with his elegant oval nameplate to pastedown. Sadleir (1888-195)] was a noted collector of Victorian fiction, a nineteenth century bibliographer, close friend of Ian Fleming, and author, most notably of the grimy backstreet story Fanny by Gaslight (1940). His remarkable collection of Victorian fiction, now at the UCLA Department of Special Collections, was the subject of a catalogue published in 1951. Item #73662

Richards A174.

Price: £9,750.00