Author Description

This volume collects over three hundred of Kipling's early poems, gathered from a wide variety of sources: many exist only in manuscript form, others were published in Anglo-Indian newspapers, and still others can be found only in obscure editions. All were written between 1879-1889, during Kipling's years as a precocious school-boy and as a young journalist in India. Andrew Rutherford draws on unpublished correspondence and the files of Anglo-Indian newspapers fo reveal the ways in which many of the verses relate to issues, events and personalities of the day, or to aspects of Kipling's own experience. The Early Verse of Kipling is a remarkable extension of the canon, and a major contribution to our understanding of the poet at the formative stage of his literary career.