[H. BUXTON FORMAN COPY]. Just So Stories for Little Children

London: Macmillan, 1902. First Edition. Good. 8vo. vi, 252 pp. Original publisher's cloth (somwhat worn, front hinge cracked). Pastedowns and endleaves opposite with foxing as commonly. Half-morocco case, front cover with reproduction of the original cloth design printed on paper. ONE OF THE BEST CHILDREN'S BOOKS OF ALL TIME, "Just So Stories" features 22 illustrations by Rudyard Kipling himself (who also designed the covers). FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE (with the date 1902 printed on the title-page), FIRST IMPRESSION (with the printer's mark on p. [251]).

"The 'Just So Stories' began as bedtime stories told by Kipling to his daughter Effie. When the first three were published in a children's magazine, a year before her death, Kipling explained: 'In the evening there were stories meant to put Effie to sleep, and you were not allowed to alter those by one single little word. They had to be told just so; or Effie would wake up and put back the missing sentence. So at last they came to be like charms, all three of them - the whale tale, the camel tale, and the rhinoceros tale.'

"Nine of the thirteen 'Just So Stories' tell how particular animals were modified from their original forms to their current forms by the acts of human beings or magical beings. For example, the Whale has a tiny throat because he swallowed a mariner, who tied a raft inside to block the whale from swallowing other men. The Camel has a hump given to him by a djinn as punishment for the camel's refusing to work (the hump allows the camel to work longer between times of eating). The Leopard's spots were painted by an Ethiopian (after the Ethiopian painted himself black). The Kangaroo gets its powerful hind legs, long tail and hopping gait after being chased all day by a dingo, sent by a minor god responding to the Kangaroo's request to be made different from all other animals."

Our favorite remains "The Cat that Walked by Himself" which as a statement of individuality was profoundly influential to us. So it begins:

"Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild-as wild as wild could be-and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.

"Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn't even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail-down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, 'Wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.'"

CONTENTS:

1. How the Whale Got His Throat - why the larger whales eat only small prey.
2. How the Camel Got His Hump - how the idle camel was punished and given a hump.
3. How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin - why rhinos have folds in their skin and bad tempers.
4. How the Leopard Got His Spots - why leopards have spots.
5. The Elephant's Child/How the Elephant Got His Trunk - how the elephant's trunk became long.
6. The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo - how the kangaroo assumed long legs and tail.
7. The Beginning of the Armadillos - how a hedgehog and tortoise transformed into the first armadillos.
8. How the First Letter Was Written - introduces the only characters who appear in more than one story: a family of cave-people, called Tegumai Bopsulai (the father), Teshumai Tewindrow (the mother), and Taffimai Metallumai, shortened to Taffy, (the daughter), and explains how Taffy delivered a picture message to her mother.
9. How the Alphabet Was Made - tells how Taffy and her father invent an alphabet.
10. The Crab that Played with the Sea - explains the ebb and flow of the tides, as well as how the crab changed from a huge animal into a small one.
11. The Cat that Walked by Himself - explains how man domesticated all the wild animals, even the cat, which insisted on greater independence.
12. The Butterfly that Stamped - how Solomon saved the pride of a butterfly, and the Queen of Sheba used this to prevent his wives scolding him.

WITH THE BOOKPLATE OF H. BUXTON FORMAN (his posthumous sale at Anderson Galleries, 27 April 1920, lot 582). Forman was not only an important book collector and bibliographer, he was a conspirator (with T.J. Wise) of the infamous series of "creatively forged" pamphlets that were described by Carter and Pollard in their jaw-dropping account entitled "An Enquiry Into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth-Century Pamphlets" (1934). Forman's own nepharious activities predated his conspiracies with Wise. Forman died in 1917, before his participation in the scheme was fully understood. After the "Enquiry" was published, Wise blamed Forman for everything; see Nicholas Barker and John Collins, "Sequel to an Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets by John Carter and Graham Pollard: The Forgeries of H. Buxton Forman & T.J. Wise" (1992).