Author Description

This is the first scholarly edition to bring together the best short stories and poems of Rudyard Kipling. Covering the full range of Kipling's career from the 1880s to the 1930s it includes selections from Plain Tales from the Hills, Traffics and Discoveries, Just So Stories, Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses, and many more. A hugely inventive writer, Kipling displayed his comic mastery as well as bleak insights into human behaviour in his work, and stories such as `Mary Postgate', `The Man who would be King', and `Mrs Bathurst' established his reputation as an artist who still has the power to astonish his readers. In his introduction and notes Daniel Karlin addresses the social and political engagement of Kipling's art, and the controversies over his critical and popular reputation. Two appendices consider Kipling's attitude to British rule in India and to the army, and original illustrations include a map of the Punjab from `The Man who would be King'.