1897 First UK Edition, 2nd Printing - Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling

A handsome 1897 first UK edition, second printing, in the publisher’s striking gilt pictorial cloth, with I. W. Taber’s atmospheric illustrations of life and peril on the Grand Banks.

Author: Rudyard Kipling.
Title: ‘Captains Courageous’: A Story of the Grand Banks.
Illustrator: I. W. Taber [Isaac Walton Taber].
Publisher: London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1897.
Edition: First UK Edition, Second Printing. The copyright page states “First Edition October 1897. Reprinted November 1897,” identifying this copy as the second printing, issued only one month after the first.
Language: English.
Pages: viii, 245 pages + publisher’s advertisement.
Size: 7.5 x 5 inches.
Binding: Near fine original deep blue cloth binding, beautifully decorated and lettered in gilt. The upper board carries a large maritime vignette of fishermen working from a small boat, with a schooner beyond, while the spine is similarly decorated with a figure at sea. Gilt titles and decorative wave borders remain notably bright and well preserved. Only light rubbing and minor wear to the spine ends and extremities, as shown. Black coated endpapers. Hinges firm and binding sound. All edges gilt. Protected in a removable mylar cover. 
Content: Very good content, complete, tight and well preserved. Scattered light foxing and spotting, principally to the preliminary leaves, tissue guard and occasional margins, as shown, otherwise the pages remain clean and fresh. Original tissue guard retained to the frontispiece.
Illustrations: Illustrated throughout by I. W. Taber, including the dramatic frontispiece of the We’re Here battling heavy seas and numerous full-page maritime scenes depicting schooners, fishing boats, the Grand Banks fleet, and the principal characters. Taber’s vigorous pen-and-ink work is particularly well suited to Kipling’s North Atlantic setting.

Estimate: US$225–325.

The book: Captains Courageous follows Harvey Cheyne, the spoiled teenage son of a wealthy American industrialist, who falls overboard from a transatlantic liner and is rescued by the crew of the Gloucester fishing schooner We’re Here. Unable to persuade the fishermen of his wealth or importance, Harvey is put to work alongside them for the remainder of the season. Life aboard the schooner—dangerous, disciplined and utterly removed from his privileged upbringing—gradually transforms him.

First published in book form in 1897, the novel grew from Kipling’s fascination with New England maritime culture and the hazardous cod fishery of the Grand Banks. The result is one of his most vivid adventure stories, rich in nautical detail, fishermen’s speech and descriptions of the North Atlantic. This London edition followed the American publication and appeared with Taber’s illustrations and Macmillan’s exceptionally handsome gilt pictorial binding.

The author: Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was an English novelist, poet and short-story writer whose works include The Jungle Book, The Second Jungle Book, Kim and Just So Stories. Born in Bombay and educated in England, Kipling drew upon both British India and his extensive travels for his fiction. In 1907 he became the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The illustrator: Isaac Walton Taber (1857–1933), generally credited as I. W. Taber or Walton Taber, was an American illustrator whose work appeared in leading periodicals including St. Nicholas and The Century. Particularly accomplished in maritime subjects, he illustrated several important works of sea literature. His drawings for Captains Courageous give the novel an unusually immediate documentary quality, combining dramatic seascapes with closely observed depictions of ships, fishermen and working life at sea.