1885 Quartette – The Christmas Annual Of The Civil & Military Gazette - By Four Anglo-Indian Writers, Rudyard Kipling, his parents and sister, Lahore: The “Civil and Military Gazette” Press, Bound in trellis-design buckram with gilt title on spine. The blank free front endpaper with minor tape repairs. Title-page joint stressed. Else a fine copy. This is only the third book with contributions by Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]. ‘Schoolboy Lyrics’, bringing together his poems sent to his mother in Lahore, was privately published by her without his knowledge or approval just before he returned to India from England in 1881 and was not meant for sale. In autumn 1884 Kipling and his sister Trix brought out ‘Echoes by Two Writers’. The following year ‘Quartette’ came out. As its name suggests, it contains writings by four contributors - Kipling, his parents and sister - and was published when he was just 20. Of the 16 prose and verse pieces in it, Kipling contributed eight [five poems and three stories]. Only two of the stories, "The Phantom 'Rickshaw" and "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes," were later collected elsewhere; the poems were never reprinted. Its production was personally overseen by Kipling. [See ‘Early Verse by Rudyard Kipling 1879-1889’ edited by Andrew Rutherford, Clarendon Press Oxford, 1986, pp. 29-30]