Captains Courageous: A Story of the Grand Banks
London: The Macmillan and Company Limited, 1897.
First British edition, first printing. Signed by Rudyard Kipling on the title page. viii, 245 pp., illustrated with wood engravings. Bound in publisher's navy cloth with pictorial stamping in gilt, all edges gilt, black endpapers; lacking the exceedingly rare dust jacket. Near Fine with sunning to spine, light rubbing and soiling to cloth, and minimal mottling to cloth over rear board. Hinges starting with webbing exposed at rear hinge, contents lightly toned, faint foxing to prelims and margins. Housed in a custom chemise slipcase, blue cloth over quarter blue morocco titled in gilt, somewhat rubbed, with foxing to paper lining of chemise. Livingston 136, Martindell 68.
Rudyard Kipling wrote Captains Courageous during the years he lived in Vermont with his young family, in a house he designed to resemble a ship. The Dr. James Conland to whom the American edition is dedicated was the family physician, whose stories of his time in a Massachusetts fishing fleet inspired this bildungsroman about a millionaire's son who learns the value of hard work at sea. The novel drew praise from Teddy Roosevelt, and the 1937 film adaptation won Spencer Tracy an Oscar for his portrayal of a kindly fisherman.
The first British edition, slightly preceded by the first American edition, was issued by Macmillan in pretty gift binding reflecting the status Kipling had already achieved as a writer. Signed copies are rare.
Price: $12,500