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Limited edition of 525 sets of which 500, signed by the author, were for sale. However many of these were destroyed when the publisher's warehouse was bombed in 1941. 35 vols, royal 8vo, full russet Niger morocco, handmade paper, top edges rough-gilded, other edges untrimmed. several thousand pages. The Sussex edition is the definitive edition of Kipling's works, splendidly produced and much sought after by collectors. Some contemporary Macmillan advertising material described it thus: "[The Sussex Edition] had been planned some years before the author's death, and was designed to rank as the definitive edition of all his works in prose and verse, in the most complete and handsome form. Kipling had undertaken a detailed revision of the text for this purpose, and had autographed and numbered the first volume of each set. He left behind him careful instructions regarding the unpublished or uncollected writings which are so conspicuous and interesting a feature of the Sussex Edition. This material includes over sixty stories, articles, and speeches, besides such groups of papers as The War in the Mountains, Eyes of Asia, and Brazilian Sketches, none of them previously published in book form, if at all, in this country, and the whole of his early or uncollected verse." From a contemporary review in the TLS: "The publishers are justified in the use of the epithet "superb" to describe this edition. The fine hand-made paper and Bembo type are equally satisfactory : but perhaps the binding is still more notable. It is . Niger leather, lettered and simply ornamented in gold. The volumes, though ten inches by six and three quarter inches in size, are comparatively slim and so easy to hold; and they have an air of durability and of being meant for reading as well as for keeping, which is not always the case with éditions de luxe." Set No.215. Armorial bookplate on the front pastedown endpaper of each volume: 'Ex Libris des Comtes Arrivabene Valenti-Gonzaga'. Spines rubbed and several volumes with some corner or edge-wear or small scrapes to the leather, three volumes (5, 6, 7) with blotches to the spine (sometimes extending slightly to the boards); otherwise a good set with good uniformity of colour (not always the case with this edition). Internally excellent - clean fresh copies with most volumes unopened or largely so. Seller Inventory # ABE-52449
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