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Edition of Kipling's tales, translated into French by Louis Fabulet and Robert d'Humières. Numbered copy printed on Rives. Minor rubbing to the upper joint and lower corners.

Illustrated with a frontispiece by Paul Colin.

Bound in an elegant navy blue 3/4 morocco binding, spine with five raised bands and floral mosaic morocco inlays in red, green, and yellow, gilt date at foot, decorative abstract paper boards, covers framed in gilt, blue mottled paper endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers and spine preserved, top edge gilt, binding signed by Grégoire Lévitsky.

With an exceptional signed autograph inscription by Kipling from his poem "France," on the half-title, featuring several unpublished variants. This remarkable ode was composed in celebration of French President Raymond Poincaré’s official visit to London on 24 June 1913 and  became the epitome of the strenghtened bonds between France and the United Kingdom. Kipling even recorded this very stanza on 23 November 1921 during a visit to Paris:

"Broke to every known mischance – lifted over all

By the light, sane joy of life – the buckler of the Gaul.

Furious in luxury, merciless in toil. 

Terrible with strength renewed from her tireless soil.

First to seek new truth and last to leave old truths behind

France, beloved of every soul that loves and serves mankind

"France"

1913"

Kipling later reused this poem as a preface to his pamphlet France at War, published in 1915, after its initial appearance in the Morning Post (24 June 1913). Following the war, Kipling was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Paris, where he read aloud this very passage.  The recording is now held in the phonographic archive of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Université de Paris, Archives de la parole).

It is worth noting that the verses chosen for this inscription—clearly of great personal significance to the author—were conceived as a refrain opening and closing his poem "France." The two versions published in the poem contain slight variations. Kipling merged them here into a single version with some unpublished variants, particularly in the final line "France, beloved of every soul that loves and serves mankind", whereas the original opening line read "that loves or serves its kind!" and the closing one, "that loves its fellow-kind!" Kipling thus chose to replace "kind" with "mankind," reinforcing the poem's celebration of France's values of universalism. Another noteworthy unpublished variant appears in the line "First to seek new truth" instead of "First to face the Truth" or "First to follow Truth".

Kipling’s affection for France dates back to his childhood, to his first visit to Paris with his father, recounted in Something of Myself. His discovery of the 1878 Universal Exhibition was "a true education that sealed [his] love for France."

A genuine premonition of the need for a Franco-British alliance, this poem written on the eve of the Great War was a great success in France. According to his biographer Lord Birkenhead, it "had an electrifying effect on the country and even influenced the course of international relations." It was translated several times into French, notably by José de Bérys with Kipling’s approval ("Le Poème à la France", La Nouvelle Revue, 1 September 1919, p. 16), from which the following lines match the manuscript inscription above:

"Toi qui, dans la tourmente et les calamités

Vainquis par la santé de ton libre génie,

Tu tires de ton sol une force infinie,

Ô France, dans le luxe et la sérénité.

 

Tu sais ce que tu vaux, Nation immortelle,

La dernière à quitter les vieilles vérités,

La première à goûter les vérités nouvelles,

Ô France, douce aux cœurs épris d'humanité!"

A magnificent poetic tribute to France by Kipling, which Carrington described as "an homage to the French national character expressed in terms very different from the conventional English view," celebrating "his commitment to the Anglo-French Entente, a solid foundation for his political ideals for the rest of his life" (Charles Carrington, *Rudyard Kipling, His Life and Work*, 1955, p. 415).