[1909] A Song of the English

Description

Colour Plates, Illustrated, Original Binding, Publishers' Original Binding

An early edition, reprinted from 'The Seven Seas' by Methuen, then printed for the first time on its own as a limited signed edition. This edition features the monochrome title page, rather than the alternative red accented title page with the red shield, and the sixteen plates rather than the thirty found in the first trade edition. 

Beautifully illustrated by W. Heath Robinson with a colour frontispiece, many monochrome vignettes and fifteen full colour tipped in plates. Collated, complete. 

An anthology of poems by Rudyard Kipling, in which he explores the question of British Imperialism towards the end of the Empire's life. Kipling uses the imagery of seafarers going to far-flung corners of the Earth in most of these poems, in particular in the series 'The Song of the Cities', in which he discusses capitals such as Bombay, Hong Kong, and Sydney.

In the publisher's original decorative cloth.