Kim (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) - Rudyard Kipling [4]
1910 Kipling’s most-quoted poem,ʻʻIf,ʼʼ is published in a collection titledRewards and Fairies.
1911 A School History of England, a collaborative work by Kipling and the historian C.R.L.Fletcher, is published. J.N.Barrie publishes his novelPeter and Wendy, more commonly published today under the title Peter Pan
1914 On September 2, shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Britain’s War Propaganda Bureau holds a symposium of leading British writers (including Arthur Conan Doyle, Ford Madox Ford, and H.G.Wells) to discuss how to foreword the nation’s interests in the war. Kipling’s invitation is withdrawn because of his political views, but he is subsequently allowed to tour Britain’s army camps.This experiance leads to the publication of The New Army in Training and,after a visit to the Western Front in 1915, France in Warand a commissioned work on the Royal Navy.The Fringes of the Fleet (Both published in 1915). Edgar Rice Burroughs publishes Tarzan of the Apes .
1915 Six weeks after enlisting in the Irish Guards, Kipling’s son John is killed during the Battle of Loos in France. His death will haunt Kipling for the rest of his life
1919-1932 Between intermittent travels during the next dozen years.Kipling continues to publish stories, poems, and historical works, including The Graves of the Fallen, and a book of verse, The Years Between, both published in 1919
1923 He is elected rector of St. Andrews University, Scotland, and publishes The Irish Guards in the Great war.
1924 He publishes Land and Sea: Tales for Boys and Girls. He appears before 6,000 boy Scouts at the Imperial Jamboree.
1928 A Book of Words: Selections of speeches and Addresses Delivered Between 1906 and 1927 is published.
1932 Kipling publishes a volume of stories, Limits and Renewals.
1936 Kiplings dies on January 18 of peritonitis and is burried in Westminster Abbey.
1937 Something of Myself, Kipling’s autobiography is published.
1945 The end of World War II accelerates the decline of the British Empire.
Introduction
Rudyard Kipling spoke, thought, and dreamed in Hindi until he was six years old. In his autobiography Something of Myself ( 1937) , he explained why he was uniquely qualified to create the literary image of India that has lasted for more than a century. “Meeta, my Hindu bearer, would sometimes go into little Hindu temples where, being below the age of caste, I held his hand and looked at the dimly seen, friendly gods.” Less friendly was the sinister place where the Parsees left their corpses to be devoured by ravenous birds of prey, which frantically fought for position when a new human meal was served up: “Near our little house on the Bombay Esplanade were the Towers of Silence, where their Dead are exposed to the waiting vultures on the rim of the towers, who scuffle and spread wings when they see the bearers of the Dead below.”1
Born in Bombay in 1865, the son of an artist and teacher who later became curator of the museum in Lahore (now in Pakistan), Kipling was closely related to two Pre-Raphaelite painters and to the future prime minister Stanley Baldwin. In 1871, three years after the birth of his sister, Alice, the children—following the custom of the country—were sent to England to be educated and anglicized in a healthier climate. They landed in lodgings that Kipling called the “House of Desolation” in Southsea, on the Channel coast near Portsmouth, where he was bullied, beaten, and tormented. His poor eyesight made him especially vulnerable, and he suffered partial blindness and a severe nervous breakdown. He naturally felt abandoned by his parents, who lived in India, but never blamed them for his misery.
In “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” (1888), a story of unmotivated torment and irreparable loss, Kipling recounted his horrific experiences. As in Franz Kafka’s work, the victim feels a profound sense of guilt but has no understanding of his crime. As they prepare