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The Light That Failed

The Light That Failed

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The Light That Failed

by Rudyard Kipling

  • Used
  • very good
  • Hardcover
Condition
Very Good
Seller
Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Tarrington, Herefordshire, United Kingdom
Item Price
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About This Item

London: Macmillan and Co. Limited, 1923. Reprint . Very Good. 4.5 x 6.75 inches (11 x 17 cm). Macmillan's Pocket Kipling edition. Limp full red calf leather binding with gilt motif to front cover and gilt decoration to spine. Top page edge gilt, silk page marker. Slight wear to head of spine. Very light foxing to endpapers, very clean text throughout. Gift inscription to front free endpaper (dated 1923). Overall condition is Very Good. International postage will be less than the stated rate. Actual costs are Europe £11.20; USA £18.10; Oceania £18.05; Rest of World £15.85. A postage refund will be made after the order has been placed. Size: 4.5 x 6.75 inches (11 x 17 cm). Hardback. Printed pages: 289

Synopsis

So we settled it all when the storm was done As comf'y as comf'y could be; And I was to wait in the barn, my dears, Because I was only three; And Teddy would run to the rainbow's foot, Because he was five and a man; And that's how it all began, my dears, And that's how it all began. - Big Barn Stories.

Reviews

On Nov 24 2011, Feeney said:
In 1889 the 23-year old Rudyard settled in London after seven intensely active years as a very young journalist in British India. Before he was 25, verses and stories originally published in India such as the short story "Baa Baa, Black Sheep" had been re-issued to acclaim in England and America. And fresh materials poured out, notably 1891's THE LIGHT THAT FAILED. Kipling dashed off that hugely autobiographical novel off within a three-month publisher's deadline. It drew heavily on his first and just then ending romance with painter Florence Garrard which had begun when both were teenagers. Florence became the model for aspiring painter Maisie in THE LIGHT THAT FAILED, as was also Kipling's beloved sister Trix, drawn on for Maisie when very young. *** Hero of THE LIGHT THAT FAILED is Dick Heldar, talented, rising but more than a little cynical London artist and onetime companion in Africa of famed war correspondent Gilbert Belling Torpenow. During the 1885 Sudan campaign to relieve besieged General Charles Gordon in Khartoum, Dick and Torpenow defended themselves together during a battle when Dick received a blow to the head. Within a few years that fateful saber cut made Dick blind, just after completing his greatest painting, "Melancholia." Without now blind Dick's noticing, but just after it had been admired by a stunned Torpenow, that great painting was destroyed by Heldar's vengeful, low-class scheming young model Bessie Broke. Bessie had made a romantic play for Torpenow, which Dick had put an end to. *** THE LIGHT THAT FAILED is about art and what makes it good or bad. It was written during the heyday of Oscar Wilde and Wilde's view that life follows art. Kipling is of the opposite view. Not for Kipling, Torpenow or Dick Heldar is there appeal in the effete artistic dandies of London salons who would rather talk about art than paint. Torpenow and other war correspondents write of and Dick at his best paints with honesty he-men soldiers of the Queen dying and doing and suffering unspeakable things in foreign wars. *** Dick loves Maisie with growing passion, which she never reciprocates, thanks to the baleful influence of her roommate, "the red-headed woman." In the end forever blind Dick returns privately, unponsored and uninvited to a later war in Sudan only, after adventures, to be shot from his saddle about to descent from a camel and die at the front in Torpenow's arms. *** Critics marvel that THE LIGHT THAT FAILED has never once been out of print, despite its being, in their view, of the third among perhaps five ranks in Kipling's voluminous writings. The novel has been twice transformed into a feature film, most recently in 1939 starring Ronald Colman as Dick Heldar. The book has staying power, even today being studied in university courses in feminism where Kipling's explorations of inter-sex and intra-sex personal relations come to the fore. -OOO-

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Details

Bookseller
Tarrington Books GB (GB)
Bookseller's Inventory #
1218E031
Title
The Light That Failed
Author
Rudyard Kipling
Book Condition
Used - Very Good
Quantity Available
1
Edition
Reprint
Binding
Hardcover
Publisher
Macmillan and Co. Limited
Place of Publication
London
Date Published
1923
Size
4.5 x 6.75 inches (11 x 17 cm)
Keywords
, Fiction
Bookseller catalogs
Fine Bindings; Fiction;

Terms of Sale

Tarrington Books

30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.

About the Seller

Tarrington Books

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2015
Tarrington, Herefordshire

About Tarrington Books

A family run bookshop located in the heart of rural Herefordshire. Large selection of children's literature, crime fiction, military, history, travel, vintage paperbacks, quality antiquarian volumes & fine bindings. We offer free UK postage on all items and pride ourselves on our safe packaging and rapid dispatch of orders. Browsers welcome by appointment.

Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Reprint
Any printing of a book which follows the original edition. By definition, a reprint is not a first edition.
Spine
The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
Calf
Calf or calf hide is a common form of leather binding. Calf binding is naturally a light brown but there are ways to treat the...
Gilt
The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...

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