Square 8vo. Illustrated with plates by Kipling. Original red pictorial cloth stamped in black and white (light rubbing).

FIRST EDITION of Kipling's classic collection of children's stories explaining, among other questions, "How the Camel Got its Hump." The tales included in Just So Stories largely began as bedtime stories told by Kipling to his daughter Josephine, with the first three appearing in a children's magazines a year before her death. Kipling later wrote, "...in the evening there were stories meant to put Effie to sleep, and you were not allowed to alter those by one single little word. They had to be told just so; or Effie would wake up and put back the missing sentence. So at last they came to be like charms, all three of them – the whale tale, the camel tale, and the rhinoceros tale." The other nine were written down following Josephine's passing and were published "just so," with the narrator often referring to the listener as "My best Beloved." In 2002 a series of British postal stamps were issued featuring images from Just So Stories in commemoration of its one hundredth anniversary. Grolier, One Hundred Books Famous in Children's Literature 57; Livingston 267; Stewart 260. A VERY FINE COPY.