Add MS 45100

'AFTER', by Joseph Rudyard Kipling, 16 July 1897: a draft of the poem first printed in The Times on the following day under the title 'Recessional' and differing from the printed version twice in the last verse (viz. the third line reads 'All piteous dust that builds on dust' and the last line, 'Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord', readopted in the printed version, has here been deleted in favour of 'Thy mercy and forgiveness, Lord'). Autograph. Beneath the poem, in Kipling's hand is the note (for explanation see ff. i-iv) 'done in council at North End House [Rottingdean, co. Suss.], July 16', followed by the names of 'Aunt Georgie' (Georgiana, Lady Burne-Jones), 'Sallie' (Sara Norton), 'Carrie [Caroline, Kipling's wife] and me'. Another (unfinished) draft of 'After' was given by Kipling, along with the present copy, to Sara Norton and is now in Harvard College Library. An autograph copy, with the title 'Recessional', is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, cf. The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1941-1948, p. 54. Preceding the poem are (ff. i-iv) two accounts of its history (the second a typewritten summary of the first, which is in the hand of Miss Elizabeth Gaskell Norton) and (ff. v-viii) a printed pamphlet relating to the Harvard fragment (another copy of the pamphlet is in the Department of Printed Books, press-mark 11655. e. 96). Paper; ff. viii + 1. Folio. A.D. 1897. Presented by Miss E.G. Norton through the 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley (ff. v-viii by Miss Flora V. Livingston).