THE IRISH GUARDS IN THE GREAT WAR

1923. Edited and Compiled from their Diaries and Papers. [In Two Volumes.] London: Macmillan and Co., 1923. Original red cloth with Irish Guards star in gilt, with dust jackets.

First Edition of this exhaustive narrative of the experience of the Irish Guards during the Great War. Kipling had good reason to focus such attention on the Irish Guards: these volumes constitute, in effect, his memorial to his only son, John -- a second lieutenant of the Irish Guards who, just a month after arriving in France, was missing in action after the Battle of Loos in September 1915 (see pp 11-15 & 225 & 229 in Vol II). John's body was never found, so it is unknown whether he died in action or as a German prisoner of war. The loss of John intensified Kipling's already considerable hatred of the Germans. "The royalties went to a soldiers' widows' charity. John Buchan, reviewing this edition..., wrote 'No other book can ever be written exactly like this, and it seems likely to endure as the fullest document of the war-life of a British regiment..." [Richards]. These are fine copies in fine dust jackets. Richards A340; Stewart 503; Livingston 482. Provenance: two bookplates in each volume of [Major] C[harles]. A[lfred]. Cuthbert Keeson, V.D. (1857-1925), who, the same year as Kipling's two-volume history of THE IRISH GUARDS, published a two-volume history of Queen Victoria's Rifles.