KIM

London: Macmillan and Co., 1901. 2 pp undated ads. Original red cloth with Ganesha device in gilt. 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 new meaning). This is a very good-plus copy (minor rubbing of the elephant-head and at the extremities); as always, there is some foxing of the endpapers and of the frontispiece tissue guard. Richards A174; Stewart 254; Livingston 250. One of the books selected as a "Modern Library 100" for the 20th Century. Provenance: the front free endpaper bears the inked inscription "Jos Pulford | "Alcinous" S.S." Between 1901 and 1905, "J. Pulford" was the master and commander of the SS Alcinous, a British steamship (launched in December 1899) that transported goods and passengers between the UK (London and Glasgow), Hong Kong, and several ports in Australia; the vessel would not survive the Great War.…