How the Whale Got His Throat

Notes

"How the Whale Got His Tiny Throat". Copyright 1897, by the Century Company. (per 1912 copyright page, Just So Stories)

Published in the US monthly St. Nicholas XXV:2 p89-93 (December 1897) as the first in a three-part serial there styled 'The "Just-So" Stories', with illustrations by Oliver Herford, preceded by one long paragraph and one sentence: "Now, this is the first tale, and it tells how the whale got his tiny throat:--" (digital copy at HathiTrust Digital Library) -- listed in the Contents of volume 25 as "How the Whale Got His Tiny Throat"

Slightly edited in the book, primarily by frequent capitalization and occasional insertion of words, notably including "O my Best Beloved" and "Best Beloved". The preface described above does not appear in the book, whose text begins with the first story: "In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a whale, and he ate fishes." (Doubleday, 1907; identically Doubleday & Page, 1912)   The book is illustrated by Kipling whose full-page drawings, two for the first story, are accompanied by very long captions (eg, page 6 (1907)) that amount to a significant expansion of the text.