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London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1909 First English separate edition. First autograph edition. Number 167 of edition of 500. Signed and numbered by the artist W. Heath Robinson on the verso of an additional leaf placed before the fore-title, bound in white vellum, lettered in gold and illustrated on the front in dark green and gold. Boards are somewhat strung, original case is missing. Printed on heavy untrimmed cream stock, thirty tipped-in color illustrations, with paper, not tissue guards, plus B&W drawings on every page. "The Song of the English" was first published in the English Illustrated Magazine, May 1893. It was then presented as a collection by The Seven Seas. This edition, published by Hodder & Stoughton was produced for the Christmas season in 1909. The poetry collection, which includes six subsidiary poems with illustrations in colour and black and white by W Heath Robinson. These are some of Kipling's earliest verses setting out his version of the British Empire and the duties that it imposes on the English people. His definition of 'the English' is wide, embracing all of the Anglo-Saxon dominions, and probably the United States. The theme underlying this collection is that the English are the Chosen under the Lord as long as they obey the Higher Law, a theme he again returned to in "Recessional, "1897 and "White Man's Burden" 1898. The illustrator, William Heath Robinson, (1872 -1944) was born and educated in London. His early career involved illustrating books - among others: Hans Christian Andersen's Danish Fairy Tales and Legends (1897); The Arabian Nights, (1899); Tales From Shakespeare (1902), and Twelfth Night (1908), Andersen's Fairy Tales (1913), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1914), Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies (1915), and Walter de la Mare's Peacock Pie (1916). In the course of his work Heath Robinson also wrote and illustrated three children's books, The Adventures of Uncle Lubin (1902), Bill the Minder (1912) and Peter Quip in Search of a Friend (1922). Uncle Lubin is regarded as the start of Heath Robinson's career in the depiction of unlikely machines. During the First World War he drew large numbers of cartoons, depicting ever-more-unlikely secret weapons being used by the combatants. In England his name became a byword for unlikely contraptions very like Rube Goldberg's name became in the US. By Heath Robinson, Illustrator. Edition of 500. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket as Published. Illus. by W. Heath Robinson. Thick Crown Quarto.
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