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First edition thus, first impression, inscribed to the printer in the month after publication on the front free endpaper verso, "Rudyard Kipling, Signed for William Maxwell, Nov. 12/33". It is signed again by Kipling on the frontispiece, underneath his printed signature. A typed letter signed from Kipling to Maxwell, and a 1936 ticket to Kipling's funeral service, are loosely inserted. Kipling's letter is dated 2 November 1933 and reads, "Dear Mr Maxwell, Of course I shall be very happy to inscribe the new Inclusive Verse if you will send it to me here. It's a beautifully turned out book. Most sincerely, Rudyard Kipling". William Maxwell (1873-1957) was managing director of the printers R. & R. Clark, which had long associated with Kipling. The two had collaborated on the previous 1927 edition of Kipling's Inclusive Verse, following which Kipling wrote to Maxwell on 8 January 1928: "With all the pleasure in the world! Artists are few - and in the Sacred art of printing very few: and I owe R. & R. a long debt for the poems and the feeling with which they have presented my books for so long" (Letters, V, p. 409). Maxwell's signed copy of the 1927 edition is now held at Yale. When they renewed their collaboration for this expanded edition of 1933, Kipling wrote to Maxwell saying he was "glad to be in your hands again. They are the best I know" (Letters, VI, p. 155). Maxwell assembled the Edward Clark Collection of the history of printing, held at Edinburgh Napier University Library. His bookplate, seen on the front pastedown, was engraved with a printing workshop scene in 1933 by John Farleigh, best known for illustrating George Bernard Shaw's The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (1932). Following the Collected Verse (1907), the Inclusive Verse series was published in 1919 and expanded in 1921, 1927, and finally by Kipling in this 1933 edition, which contains an additional 62 poems written between 1926 and 1932. It also includes the first appearance of five poems in book form, "The Friends", "A Song of Bananas", "Song of the Dynamo", "Such as in Ships", and "Hymn of the Triumphant Airman". Delighted by his last lifetime collection of poems, Kipling stated while editing the proofs that "the whole blessed thing is about eight hundred pages" (Richards). It was followed by the posthumous "Definitive Edition" of 1940. This copy, in the dust jacket and original box, is printed on India paper and bound in morocco. Copies were also issued on standard paper and bound in cloth. Richards A416; Stewart 605. Thomas Pinney, ed., The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, 1990. Octavo. Original blue morocco, spine lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt. With dust jacket. Housed in the publisher's printed card box, later annotated in manuscript describing the provenance. Partial splits to front inner hinge, minor foxing to endpapers, else clean; jacket faded to green, folds reinforced with Japanese tissue, unclipped; wear to box, neatly stabilized: overall, a very good copy.
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