Confessions of a Bookman

Somewhere along the line I had acquired a certain reverence for books. They were of course only grease marks on wood pulp, but in the right hands they were the record and distillation of man’s effort to live an examined life.

There was one shelf in my parents’ library that filled me with awe. It was some 12 or 14 volumes in blue leather with golden lettering on the spines and the finest rough-edged linen paper, and on almost every page of the first volume there was a marvelously beautiful sketch in watercolor. This was the Bombay Edition of the Works of Rudyard Kipling. On a flyleaf I used to read, over and over again, “Of the Bombay Edition two hundred sets have been signed by the author. This is #97.” There followed a straight line, along which Mr. Kipling had affixed his firm and very businesslike signature. And then the showstopper: “Two sets have been hand-illustrated by British artists, of which Set #1 is in Buckingham Palace.” Pretty heady stuff! We had the only one outside Buckingham Palace!

WR

About the Author

William F. Rickenbacker

Featured Tags

Somewhere along the line I had acquired a certain reverence for books. They were of course only grease marks on wood pulp, but in the right hands they were the record and distillation of man’s effort to live an examined life.

There was one shelf in my parents’ library that filled me with awe. It was some 12 or 14 volumes in blue leather with golden lettering on the spines and the finest rough-edged linen paper, and on almost every page of the first volume there was a marvelously beautiful sketch in watercolor. This was the Bombay Edition of the Works of Rudyard Kipling. On a flyleaf I used to read, over and over again, “Of the Bombay Edition two hundred sets have been signed by the author. This is #97.” There followed a straight line, along which Mr. Kipling had affixed his firm and very businesslike signature. And then the showstopper: “Two sets have been hand-illustrated by British artists, of which Set #1 is in Buckingham Palace.” Pretty heady stuff! We had the only one outside Buckingham Palace!