The Brushwood Boy
New York: Doubleday and McClure Company, 1899. Hardcover. Teal cloth/boards with Art Nouveau cover and spine decoration of entwined trees and a silver crescent moon. Gilt lettering, TEG, and with decorative end papers. 119 pp. with tissue-guarded color frontis and 28 bw illus. plus line drawing decorations. VG, clean and tight with a hint of minor shelf wear. Gilt and decoration still fresh. Inscription from July 1910 on half title. "The End" has been altered to "The Beginning, Oct. 28th 1910" in ink. Item #152191
This story first appeared in The Century Magazine for December 1895, with no illustrations. The story tells of the early life of an upper middle-class English Army officer, George Cottar, from his early childhood, through his schooldays, to his return from India at the end of his first tour of duty there. Interwoven into this is an account of his dreams, in which a young girl features: he has met her only once, but clearly she has penetrated his mind; and in the tale she is his constant companion and grows up as he does. The dreams have a consistent theme and imaginary countryside (which Kipling drew as a map). On his return home, he meets this same girl; she does not realise that she has featured in his dreams for some 21 years – nor does he realise that she, too, has dreamed about him, and the same imaginary countryside, for the same period of time. He reveals himself to her; she realises that he is, indeed, her ‘Brushwood Boy’ (from the pile of brushwood which is the starting point for their dreams). - from www.kiplingsociety.co.uk (With lovely Art Nouveau illustrations by Orson Lowell, a well-known American illustrator and contemporary of Charles Dana Gibson.
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