The Complete Stalky & Co

First collected in 1899 and later enlarged, these school stories follow Stalky, Beetle, and M'Turk at a colonial training college on the Devon coast, a stand-in for the United Services College. The three outwit prefects and masters, avenge slights with carefully planned raids, and treat Latin, cricket, and the army class as material for private campaigns. Beetle, a bespectacled writer, resembles the young author. Later tales show the boys as officers on the Indian frontier. The book is comic school fiction with an imperial afterword, not a moral tract in the Tom Brown manner.

Bound in red cloth with a design in black and gold by Eccles. Pale yellow endleaves. Red slipcase.