The Best of Rudyard Kipling - A Collection of Essential Poetry. Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

of several visits to South Africa and became imbued with a type of imperialism that reacted on his literature, not altogether to its advantage. Before finally settling in England Mr Kipling lived some years in America and married in 1892 Miss Caroline Starr Balestier, sister of the Wolcott Balestier to whom he dedicated Barrack Room Ballads, and with whom in collaboration he wrote the Naulahka (1891), one of his less successful books. The next collection of stories, Many Inventions (1893), contained the splendid Mulvaney extravaganza,"My Lord the Elephant”; a vividly realized tale of metempsychosis,"The Finest Story in the World”; and in that fascinating tale"In the Rukh,” the prelude to the next new exhibition of the author's genius. This came in 1894 with The Jungle Book, followed in 1895 by The Second Jungle Book. With these inspired beast-stories Kipling conquered a new world and a new audience, and produced what many critics regard as his most flawless work.

      His chief subsequent publications were The Seven Seas (poems), 1896; Captains Courageous (a yarn of deep-sea fishery), 1897; The Day's Work (collected stories), 1898; A Fleet in Being (an account of a cruise in a man-of-war), 1898; Stalky and Co. (mentioned above), 1899; From Sea to Sea (mentioned above),1899; Kim, 1901; Just So Stories (for children), 1902; The Five Nations (poems, concluding with what proved Mr Kipling's most universally known and popular poem,"Recessional,” originally published in The Times on the 17th of July 1897 on the occasion of Queen Victoria's second jubilee), 1903; Traffics and Discoveries (collected stories), 1904; Puck of Pook's Hill (stories), 1906; Actions and Reactions (stories), 1909. Of these Kim was notable as far the most successful of Mr Kipling's longer narratives, though it is itself rather in the nature of a string of episodes. But everything he wrote, even to a farcical extravaganza inspired by his enthusiasm for the motor-car, breathed the meteoric energy that was the nature of the man.

      A vigorous and unconventional poet, a pioneer in the modern phase of literary Imperialism, and one of the rare masters in English prose of the art of the short story, Mr Kipling had already by the opening of the 20th century won the most conspicuous place among the creative literary forces of his day. His position in English literature was recognized in 1907 by the award to him of the Nobel prize.

      A Biography from

      1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 15

THE BEST OF RUDYARD KIPLING