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These forty short stories, many only a few pages long, portray the British in India in the 1880s: officers and civil servants, their wives and flirtations at…
These forty short stories, many only a few pages long, portray the British in India in the 1880s: officers and civil servants, their wives and flirtations at the hill station of Simla, young men who fall in love with Indian women, drunkards and misfits, and the gossip of a small, closed society. They include the first appearances of Mrs Hauksbee, the witty queen of Simla society, and of the three soldiers Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd.
Context and significance
Rudyard Kipling wrote most of the stories as a young journalist in Lahore for the Civil and Military Gazette and published them as a book in 1888, at twenty-two; they made his name in India and then in England. Read Kim and The Man Who Would Be King, and see his life.
About the author
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was born in Bombay, sent to England at five to an unhappy foster home, and returned to India at sixteen to work as a journalist in Lahore. His stories of Anglo-Indian life made him famous in London in his twenties.
The Jungle Book, written in Vermont, Kim and Just So Stories became classics, and in 1907 he became the first English-language writer to win the Nobel Prize. His poem 'If—' is still widely quoted, though his support for empire makes him a controversial figure today. His only son was killed in the First World War.