REWARDS AND FAIRIES [colonial copy]

1910. With Illustrations by Frank Craig. London: Macmillan and Co., 1910. 6 pages of front-and-rear endpaper ads. Original blue-grey wrappers lettered in black.

First Colonial Edition of this collection of tales and poems that form a continuation of the Puck stories begun in PUCK OF POOK'S HILL (1906) -- introduced by Robin Goodfellow and told to young Dan and Una. This was published in the same month (October) as the domestic edition. Included are four plates by Frank Craig; in later editions these were replaced with twelve illustrations by Charles Brock. Also included is the first appearance in book form of the famous poem "If", which leads off "If you can keep your head when all about you | Are losing theirs and blaming it on you..." Kipling later asserted that in this poem he had in mind L. Starr Jameson, leader of the Jameson Raid in the Transvaal in 1895. This is an uncommon colonial copy, still in the original wrappers -- issued as No. 577 of "Macmillan's Colonial Library," so identified on the spine, on the title page, and on the recto of the rear free endpaper (No. 579 is the highest number in the listing of colonial titles, so this is an appropriately early copy). Condition is very good, with moderate wear at the extremities, and a faint stain on the rear cover and spine. The front cover bears the label, and the title leaf bears the blind-stamp, of the original bookseller -- Higginbothams of Madras and Bangalore. See Richards A242 (where this colonial edition is cited as being bound either in orange-yellow wrappers or in "blackish-blue" cloth -- but not in these blue-grey wrappers; in the Richards copy's ads, this title is "ten titles down from the top of the list," so this copy -- in effect "two from the top" -- may be earlier than the Richards copy).