KIPLING, Rudyard "The Vampire" [Privately Printed, 1898]

KIPLING, Rudyard. The Vampire.

Boston: Privately Printed, 1898. 6" x 4.25", unpaginated [8 leaves]. Slim hardcover in pale blie cloth boards stamped in gilt and black to upper cover with decorative wreath design. Illustrated title page and repeated ornamental bat vignette printed in red throughout. Light soiling and rubbing to boards, with mild toning to spine and a bit of wear at corners. Some light smudging to text. Very Good.

A separately issued printing of Kipling’s famous poem inspired by Philip Burne-Jones’s painting The Vampire, first exhibited in London in 1897. The poem’s refrain, “A fool there was and he made his prayer”, became one of Kipling’s most quoted lines and helped fix the “vampire woman” archetype in popular culture at the turn of the century. An attractive little fin-de-siècle production, and an uncommon standalone appearance of one of the era’s most recognizable literary treatments of vampirism.