An overview of Kipling's work, his career and postcolonial views on his often controversial position on imperialism.

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) is among the most popular, acclaimed and controversial of writers in English. His books have sold in great numbers, and he remains the youngest writer to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Many associate Kipling with poems such as 'If–', his novel Kim, his pioneering use of the short story form and such works for children as the Just So Stories. For others, though, Kipling is the very symbol of the British Empire and a belligerent approach to other peoples and races. This Companion explores Kipling's main themes and texts, the different genres in which he worked and the various phases of his career. It also examines the 'afterlives' of his texts in postcolonial writing and through adaptations of his work. With a chronology and guide to further reading, this book serves as a useful introduction for students of literature and of Empire and its after effects.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was the greatest writer in a Britain that ruled the largest empire the world has known, yet he was always a controversial figure, as deeply hated as he was loved. This accessible biography aims at an understanding of the man behind the image and gives an explanation of his enduring popularity

This is a study of the forces and influences that shaped Kipling's work, including his unusual family background, his role as the laureate of empire and the deaths of two of his children, and of his complex relations with a literary world that first embraced and then rejected him.

Rudyard Kipling was a Victorian and an early modernist, a disciplinarian imperialist who sympathized with children and outlaws, a globe-trotter who mythologized 'Old England', and a world-famous author whom intellectuals despised. The central theme of this book is the way his work and its reception are both fissured and energized by these contradictions. This thorough study initially discusses Kipling's ambivalent knowing attitude to unknowable otherness, his rhetorical imitations of Indian and demotic vernaculars, his work ethic and ideal of imperialist masculinity, thus contextualizing the central discussion of his masterpiece Kim which, almost uniquely, takes Indian otherness as a source of pleasure, not anxiety. Jan Montefiore describes Kipling as a writer on the cusp of modernity, examining how his fiction and poetry engaged with radio, cinema and air travel, how his poetry anticipated and influenced the subversive uncertainties of modernism, and how his post-war contributions to the literature of mourning undermined their own overt traditionalism.

VictorianStudies on theWebCritics Choice!Rudyard Kipling: Hell and Heroism is an exploration of two fundamental yet greatly neglected aspects of the author's life and writings: his deep-seated pessimism and his complex creed of heroism. The method of the book is both biographical and critical. Biographically, it traces the roots of Kipling's dark worldview and his search for something to believe in, a way of thinking and acting in defiance of life's hellishness. There matters were more basic to him than any of his social or political opinions, but this the first full-length study devoted to them. Critically, the book takes a fresh and close look at some of Kipling's most important works. The result challenges long established assumptions and amounts to a major reconsideration of novels like Kim and stories like "Mary Postgate" and "The Gardener." Central in these discussions of individual writings is Kipling's concern with the heroic life, but of equal importance is the analysis and evaluation of them as works of art. Avoiding the tangled and special language of some recent literary theory, this will appeal to a wide audience of those interested in Kipling's mind and art.

Examination of Kipling's short stories include "Lispeth," "Mrs. Bathurst," "The Church That Was at Antioch," and "Without Benefit of Clergy."

For decades, scholars have been trying to answer the question: how was colonial Burma perceived in and by the Western world, and how did people in countries like the United Kingdom and United States form their views? This book explores how Western perceptions of Burma were influenced by the popular music of the day. From the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-6 until Burma regained its independence in 1948, more than 180 musical works with Burma-related themes were written in English-speaking countries, in addition to the many hymns composed in and about Burma by Christian missionaries. Servicemen posted to Burma added to the lexicon with marches and ditties, and after 1913 most movies about Burma had their own distinctive scores. Taking Rudyard Kipling’s 1890 ballad ‘Mandalay’ as a critical turning point, this book surveys all these works with emphasis on popular songs and show tunes, also looking at classical works, ballet scores, hymns, soldiers’ songs, sea shanties, and film soundtracks. It examines how they influenced Western perceptions of Burma, and in turn reflected those views back to Western audiences. The book sheds new light not only on the West’s historical relationship with Burma, and the colonial music scene, but also Burma’s place in the development of popular music and the rise of the global music industry. In doing so, it makes an original contribution to the fields of musicology and Asian Studies.