A reference-work profile of the first English writer to win the Nobel Prize, and a diarist’s refusal to settle the argument on one entry
Kipling from Bombay to Stockholm: Plain Tales, Kim, the White Man’s Burden and a Reputation That Fell After the First World War
A reference-work profile of the first English writer to win the Nobel Prize, and a diarist’s refusal to settle the argument on one entry
By Tinsel Vandergraph, diarist of nineteenth-century British and Indian literature and politics
Friday, Reading Room, Draught
Dear diary, Kipling is the obvious Anglo-Indian writer, so I looked at the Encyclopedia.com entry on Rudyard Kipling. It is a reference work, which is better than a blog, though the tool that fetched it read only the first 100,000 characters of a 107,620-character page, so what I report is from that part.
The entry says Kipling was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay, where his father taught architectural sculpture at the School of Art, and was sent to England for his education in 1871.
The Early Career
According to the entry, he attended the United Services College at Westward Ho! in Devon from 1878 to 1882, and Schoolboy Lyrics (1881), privately printed by his father, was his first published work. In 1882 he became a subeditor at the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, moving to the Allahabad Pioneer in 1887.
Departmental Ditties (1886) and a large body of short stories followed, including Plain Tales from the Hills (1888). He returned to London in 1889 and quickly became famous.
The Peak
The entry says he married the American Caroline Balestier in 1892 and spent several productive years in Vermont. The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book appeared in 1894 and 1895.
It dates Recessional to 1897 and The White Man’s Burden to 1899, calling them expressions of strongly imperialist views. Kim, published in 1901, is described as often considered his most accomplished novel, and Just So Stories followed in 1902.
Honours and Decline
The Five Nations (1903) drew sharp criticism, and his popularity declined after the Boer War, the entry says. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, the first English writer to do so, and died on 18 January 1936.
The entry adds that his imperialist views led to a decline in his reputation after the First World War, that critics now often describe those views as racist, and that modern critics have renewed interest in his later short stories and children’s books.
Reading Him Now
I am a reader of the Victorian and Indian literary scene, and Kipling cannot be avoided. I find the sentence about renewed interest in the later stories and children’s books honest, because it separates what a writer believed from what he made, without excusing the first or erasing the second.
I have not re-read Kim for this entry, so I make no claim about its merits beyond the entry’s phrase.
The Other View
His admirers would stress the craft of his stories and his command of voice. His critics would stress the politics of the poems and the Indian characters seen from a colonial angle. A third group would say both are true, and that the argument is itself the interesting thing. The entry I read gives the critical decline and the renewed interest, and not these named camps.
I do not put a quotation in any camp’s mouth.
A Note on Sources
A reference work compresses a life into paragraphs, and the compression has opinions. The entry’s phrase critics now often describe those views as racist is a summary of a field, not a single citation. For scholarly claims, look for the books on Kipling that engage with the empire directly.
A diary is not a monograph, and I try to remember it.
Night
The draught is cold. The entry is saved. The shelf awaits.
Goodnight, diary. Read the stories, then decide.
A Note on Dates
The entry’s dates match what I would expect from general knowledge of Kipling, but I have not checked each against a biography. The tool read only part of the page, so there may be material I did not see, including later critical assessments. That is a limit, and I state it.
If you are teaching Kipling, the safest approach is probably to read the stories alongside a critical essay from a post-colonial perspective and a defence of the craft, and then to let students argue.
Reading Room
On the Tube I read the comic papers, because the briefing notes are in my other bag. This week the big joke was property: Manila News on slow condo sales in Cebu, the London Prat on retirees asked for character references (it is at https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and Bohiney on a realtor with unsellable beachfront listings. Exaggeration all the way down, but anchored to a real market story. More at prat.uk and bohiney.com.
Diarist note: Tinsel Vandergraph is a house diarist character created for this network. She is not any real person of that name, and any resemblance is coincidental. Her opinions are a character’s, and where a claim comes from a Wikipedia page, a trade note or a reference work, the diary says so.
Note: Philippine authorities are examining unproven allegations about Thomas Markle Sr., who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. No charges have been filed. Child protection is a serious matter; the jokes here are about a property market and the paperwork.
For the lighter side of the news, try The Daily Mash, and the rest of the lot at NewsThump, NewsBiscuit and The Daily Squib.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/