The Vision and the Need: Late Victorian Imperial Aims

First edition, first impression.  150pp, with monochrome plate frontispiece (a delightful cartoon depicting the writer Rudyard Kipling taking a day out on the heath with Britannia).  Blue cloth-covered board with silver-stamped lettering on the spine.  Cloth very slightly rubbed around edges.  Internally neat, clean, bright and tight.  In its original printed paper dust jacket, rubbed and faded at edges, a little sunned over spine, residue from label on front panel.

Richard Faber (the son of the founder of the publishing house, Faber and Faber) was a British diplomat and talented writer.  In his volume he explores one often neglected aspect of Victorian Britain and the development of the British Empire – the motivations of the men who built it, set in the comparative context of other Empires; includes a chapter on Rudyard Kipling and the imperial messaging in his writing.