Rare Book Monthly

Book Catalogue Reviews - August - 2003 Issue

2000: The Future has Arrived

Cover of Kipling’s With The Night Mail.

Cover of Kipling’s With The Night Mail.

In a dig at the airplane, an ad from the “Standard Dirigible Construction Co.” states that “They (dirigibles) go up when you please and they do not come down till you please.” The problem with the airplane, as Kipling saw it, was pitch. As an ad for a device that could be retrofitted to an airplane to control this problem states, “The popularity of the large, unwieldy, slow, expensive Dirigible over the light, swift, Plane is mainly due to the former’s immunity from pitch.” Kipling’s image of the airplane is more in keeping with the Wright Bros.’ model. He evidently did not foresee anything like the huge jetliners that now fill the skies.

Kipling is right on about overnight travel from the old world to the new, which must have seemed a stretch ten years before the Titanic, but he underestimated just how fast we would go. Packet 162 cruises along at an “eighteen-second mile.” A little quick math tells me that’s 200 mph. Very slow for a modern airplane. It does speed up to 16 seconds, but that’s still a pokey 225 mph. While this speed is sufficient for a westward bound flight to drag out the dawn to twice its normal time at these higher latitudes, Kipling does predict that we will one day hold back the dawn, even at the equator. A little more quick math converts that to around 1,000 mph, fast for even today’s planes, though nothing compared to orbiting spacecraft.

Kipling is far less clear on exactly how his dirigibles fly. The secret behind these airships is “Fleury’s gas.” “We know that Fleury’s gas can lift anything, as the famous trials of ’89 showed,” he explains. We assume that’s 1989, but Kipling tells us nothing about these trials. Fleury’s gas possesses “almost indefinite powers of expansion,” and one can imagine how this could create lighter than air tanks to float the ship. Presumably, Fleury’s gas does not suffer from the explosive tendencies that the Hindenburg’s hydrogen possessed. However, he then describes tubes with rays in them without explaining how this propels the ship. Fleury’s ray, is a “mystery to this day,” which relieves Kipling of the obligation of giving us any idea of how this technology works.

The dirigibles Kipling describes generally travel at altitudes between 4,000 and 8,000 feet. That’s well below the 30,000-40,000 feet usually flown by airplanes on such long distance trips.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby’s
    Fine Manuscript and Printed Americana
    27 January 2026
    Sotheby’s, Jan. 27: An extraordinary pair of books from George Washington’s field library, marking the conjunction of Robert Rogers, George Washington, and Henry Knox. $1,200,000 to $1,800,000.
    Sotheby’s, Jan. 27: An extraordinary letter marking the conjunction of George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Benjamin Franklin. $1,000,000 to $1,500,000.
    Sotheby’s, Jan. 27: Virginia House of Delegates. The genesis of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. $350,000 to $500,000.
    Sotheby’s
    Fine Manuscript and Printed Americana
    27 January 2026
    Sotheby’s, Jan. 27: (Gettysburg). “Genl. Doubleday has taken charge of the battle”: Autograph witness to the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, illustrated by fourteen maps and plans. $200,000 to $300,000.
    Sotheby’s, Jan. 27: President Lincoln thanks a schoolboy on behalf of "all the children of the nation for his efforts to ensure "that this war shall be successful, and the Union be maintained and perpetuated." $200,000 to $300,000.
    Sotheby’s, Jan. 27: [World War II]. An archive of maps and files documenting the allied campaign in Europe, from the early stages of planning for D-Day and Operation Overlord, to Germany’s surrender. $200,000 to $300,000.
  • Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    29th January 2026
    Forum, Jan. 29: Plato. [Apanta ta tou Platonos. Omnia Platonis opera], 2 parts in 2 vol., editio princeps of Plato's works in the original Greek, Venice, House of Aldus, 1513. £8,000-12,000
    Forum, Jan. 29: Book of Hours, Use of Rome, In Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum, [Southern Netherlands (probably Bruges), c.1460]. £6,000-8,000
    Forum, Jan. 29: Correspondence and documents by or addressed to the first four Viscounts Molesworth and members of their families, letters and manuscripts, 1690-1783. £10,000-15,000
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    29th January 2026
    Forum, Jan. 29: Shakespeare (William). The Dramatic Works, 9 vol., John and Josiah Boydell, 1802. £5,000-7,000
    Forum, Jan. 29: Joyce (James). Ulysses, first edition, one of 750 copies on handmade paper, Paris, Shakespeare and Company, 1922 £8,000-12,000
    Forum, Jan. 29: Powell (Anthony). [A Dance to the Music of Time], 12 vol., first editions, each with a signed presentation inscription from the author to Osbert Lancaster, 1951-75. £6,000-8,000
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    29th January 2026
    Forum, Jan. 29: Chaucer (Geoffrey). Troilus and Criseyde, one of 225 copies on handmade paper, wood-engravings by Eric Gill, Waltham St.Lawrence, 1927. £3,000-4,000
    Forum, Jan. 29: Borges (Jorge Luis). Luna de Enfrente, first edition, one of 300 copies, presentation copy signed by the author to Leopoldo Marechal, Buenos Aires, Editorial Proa, 1925. £3,000-4,000
    Forum, Jan. 29: Nolli (Giovanni Battista). Nuova Pianta di Roma, Rome, 1748. £6,000-8,000
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    29th January 2026
    Forum, Jan. 29: Roberts (David). The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, & Nubia, 3 vol., first edition, 1842-49. £15,000-20,000
    Forum, Jan. 29: Blacker (William). Catechism of Fly Making, Angling and Dyeing, Published by the author, 1843. £3,000-4,000
    Forum, Jan. 29: Herschel (Sir John F. W.) Collection of 69 offprints, extracts and separate publications by Herschel, bound for his son, William James Herschel, 3 vol., [1813-50]. £15,000-20,000
  • Dominic Winter
    Books, Maps, Documents & Autographs
    Ornithology, Music, Bookplates
    28th January 2026
    Dominic Winter, Jan. 28: Lot 26. Company School. An album of 85 Indian mica paintings, Madras, c. 1852. £700-1,000
    Dominic Winter, Jan. 28: Lot 28. Ross & Hooker. Notes on the Botany of the Antarctic Voyage, 1st edition, 1843. £4,000-6,000
    Dominic Winter, Jan. 28: Lot 44. Gould (John). The Birds of Great Britain, 5 volumes, 1st edition, 1862-73. £30,000-40,000
    Dominic Winter
    Books, Maps, Documents & Autographs
    Ornithology, Music, Bookplates
    28th January 2026
    Dominic Winter, Jan. 28: Lot 72. Edwards (George). A Natural History of Uncommon Birds… [and] Gleanings of Natural History, 7 volumes, 1st edition, 1743-64. £7,000-10,000
    Dominic Winter, Jan. 28: Lot 87. Walcott (Charles D. et al.). Geologic Atlas of the United States, 227-volume set, U.S. Geological Survey, 1894-1945. £500-800
    Dominic Winter, Jan. 28: Lot 236. A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew…, By B. E. Gent., 1st edition, [1699]. £3,000-4,000
    Dominic Winter
    Books, Maps, Documents & Autographs
    Ornithology, Music, Bookplates
    28th January 2026
    Dominic Winter, Jan. 28: Lot 245. Frost Fair Broadside. Upon the Frost in the Year 1739-40, Printed on the Ice upon the Thames at Queen-Hithe, 1739/40. £1,500-2,000
    Dominic Winter, Jan. 28: Lot 270. Micheli (Antonino di). La Nuova Chitarra di Regole…, 1st edition, Palermo, 1680. £10,000-15,000
    Dominic Winter, Jan. 28: Lot 280. Elgar (Edward). Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, [1910], signed presentation copy. £500-800
    Dominic Winter
    Books, Maps, Documents & Autographs
    Ornithology, Music, Bookplates
    28th January 2026
    Dominic Winter, Jan. 28: Lot 282 - Griffes (Charles). Autograph Manuscript Score for Overture to Hänsel und Gretel, c. 1910. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter, Jan. 28: Lot 304. Churchill (Winston). A terracotta maquette of Churchill by Oscar Nemon, c. 1955. £1,500-2,000
    Dominic Winter, Jan. 28: Lot 364 - Russian Imperial Archaeological Commission. Mecheti Samarkanda..., Fascicule I Gour-Emir, St. Petersburg, 1905. £2,000-3,000

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