The Seven Seas

First English Edition (NAP, 1896 on the title page). I have included a photo of a description by the bookseller who I purchased the book from many years ago. It states 'First English edition with Methuen's catalogue for October 1896 at end (See Livingstone 131).' You can see the covers in the photos. The gilt lettering on the spine is still nicely bright. There is some smooth rubbing or color fading on the front and rear. There are slivers of loss at the top and bottom edges of the spine. There's also the small loss you can see on the front side of the spine off the bottom edge. The cover edges are in very good shape. The four corners each have small spots of rub-through. The top page edge is gilt. The middle and bottom page edges are deckled or rough-cut. The book is square and the spine is straight. The binding is quite decent all the way through.The covers are nicely, tightly bound. The half-title page is cleanly and slightly detached the juncture over its top 40%, the bottom 60% is securely bound. The pages are exceptionally clean. Facing pages 192-193 have a light spot off their middle edges, not reaching the print. Scrolling through, I didn't find any other conspicuous soiling. I didn't find any conspicuous creasing either, no turned-down corner creases or placeholder creases. There are no markings in the book. There are no attachments of any kind. The aforementioned bookseller penciled '1st ed. Livingstone 131' and 'Contains 3 poems not in American (?) edn' off the top edge of the blank front end paper. Also '1st Edition' off the top edge of the front inside cover. The paper at the top corner of the blank front end paper was a little crumpled and torn so I clipped it off. As you can see from the photo the title on the spine states The Seven Seas And Other Verses'. On the title page it states only The Seven Seas. The book 'The Seven Seas is a famous 1896 poetry collection by Rudyard Kipling that celebrates the romance, commerce, and global reach of the British Empire. Kipling defined the Seven Seas geographically as the North and South Atlantic, the North and South Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Arctic Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea. Notable poems in the collection: McAndrew's Hymn, The Mary Gloster, A Song of the English, and The Song of the Banjo.' 'Kipling's second major poetry collection, published in 1896, expanded his range well beyond the barracks. Where the Barrack-Room Ballads had given voice to the infantry soldier, The Seven Seas brought in the engineers, sailors, and wanderers who worked the sea-lanes of the British Empire, while a second series of soldier ballads kept the Tommy Atkins poems alive. McAndrew's Hymn, a Scottish marine engineer's Calvinist meditation on the God he finds in his engines, is among Kipling's finest dramatic monologues. In The Mary Gloster, a dying shipping magnate rages at his disappointing son from his deathbed, ranging across a lifetime of pride, loss, and contempt. The Song of the Banjo personifies the instrument as companion to pioneers and wanderers, defending popular art against more respectable rivals. The Sestina of the Tramp-Royal shows Kipling's formal range in a technically perfect sestina about a man who cannot stop moving. Poems set across the colonial world round out a collection that sold 22,000 copies on advance subscription alone, a measure of how far Kipling's reputation had traveled since the barracks ballads four years earlier.'.…