The Pocket Kipling, 4 Volume Set, 1926-1935

Publisher:  Doubleday, Page & Co. (New York, NY)

Publications Dates: 1926-1935

Construction:  Paper, Leather

Dimensions:  7 1/8" Tall x 4 3/4" Wide x 7/8" Thick

Condition:  Good vintage condition. Visible wear on edges of covers and spines. One shows small tears at top and sides of spine. Leather is breaking down and beginning to flake off in areas, two of the covers showing more significant wear. "The Years Between" back cover has more significant wear and separation of the leather. No missing or torn pages. Structurally sound and clearly legible. Please see photos. 

Details:  Soft red leather bindings with gold lettering and floral decoration on spines.  Dark red end papers.   All but "The Years Between" are decorated on the front cover with the "Ganesha Rondel" in gold and a circle holding a left-facing elephant's head with a swastika.  This edition of The Years Between, published in 1935, displays the rondel without the swastika.  The leather used in the cover of this copy appears slightly darker and less supple than that used earlier.  There is a library label on the inside end paper.  This is only four of an original 37 volumes available at one time in this edition.

The swastika is an ancient symbol of good luck and auspiciousness used by various cultures for nearly 12,000 years.  Found in ancient African and European artwork, as well as in those of Native America and Asian disciplines, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and even Persian Zoroastrianism, it has been a talisman of everything from fertility to infinity and evolving creation.  Kipling, who was born in Bombay, took the swastika as his trademark, and used it as such for forty years.  He stopped using this symbol in 1935, only a year before his death, because it had become a symbol of hatred, fascism and anti-Semitism in the hands of the Nazis.