Puck of Pook’s Hill.

KIPLING, Rudyard.

Item Number: 122514

New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1906.

First edition of Kipling’s collection of historical fantasy tales. Octavo, original dark green cloth with gilt titles to the spine and front panel, black stamped ship vignette to the front panel. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham, tissue-guarded frontispiece, top edge gilt with others untrimmed. In near fine condition.

Set in multiple periods of English history, Kipling's Puck stories are each narrated to two children living near Burwash, in the High Weald of Sussex, in the area of Kipling's own house Bateman's, by people magically plucked out of history by the elf Puck, or told by Puck himself. (Puck, who refers to himself as "the oldest Old Thing in England", is better known as a character in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream). The genres of the stories range from authentic historical novella (A Centurion of the Thirtieth, On the Great Wall) to children's fantasy (Dymchurch Flit). Each story is bracketed by a poem which relates in some manner to the theme or subject of the story.