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The Pearson Education Library Collection offers you over 1200 fiction, nonfiction, classic, adapted classic, illustrated classic, short stories, biographies, special anthologies, atlases, visual dictionaries, history trade, animal, sports titles and more
Author Notes
Kipling, who as a novelist dramatized the ambivalence of the British colonial experience, was born of English parents in Bombay and as a child knew Hindustani better than English. He spent an unhappy period of exile from his parents (and the Indian heat) with a harsh aunt in England, followed by the public schooling that inspired his "Stalky" stories. He returned to India at 18 to work on the staff of the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette and rapidly became a prolific writer. His mildly satirical work won him a reputation in England, and he returned there in 1889. Shortly after, his first novel, The Light That Failed (1890) was published, but it was not altogether successful.
In the early 1890s, Kipling met and married Caroline Balestier and moved with her to her family's estate in Brattleboro, Vermont. While there he wrote Many Inventions (1893), The Jungle Book (1894-95), and Captains Courageous (1897). He became dissatisfied with life in America, however, and moved back to England, returning to America only when his daughter died of pneumonia. Kipling never again returned to the United States, despite his great popularity there.
Short stories form the greater portion of Kipling's work and are of several distinct types. Some of his best are stories of the supernatural, the eerie and unearthly, such as "The Phantom Rickshaw," "The Brushwood Boy," and "They." His tales of gruesome horror include "The Mark of the Beast" and "The Return of Imray." "William the Conqueror" and "The Head of the District" are among his political tales of English rule in India. The "Soldiers Three" group deals with Kipling's three musketeers: an Irishman, a Cockney, and a Yorkshireman. The Anglo-Indian Tales, of social life in Simla, make up the larger part of his first four books.
Kipling wrote equally well for children and adults. His best-known children's books are Just So Stories (1902), The Jungle Books (1894-95), and Kim (1901). His short stories, although their understanding of the Indian is often moving, became minor hymns to the glory of Queen Victoria's empire and the civil servants and soldiers who staffed her outposts. Kim, an Irish boy in India who becomes the companion of a Tibetan lama, at length joins the British Secret Service, without, says Wilson, any sense of the betrayal of his friend this actually meant. Nevertheless, Kipling has left a vivid panorama of the India of his day.
In 1907, Kipling became England's first Nobel Prize winner in literature and the only nineteenth-century English poet to win the Prize. He won not only on the basis of his short stories, which more closely mirror the ambiguities of the declining Edwardian world than has commonly been recognized, but also on the basis of his tremendous ability as a popular poet. His reputation was first made with Barrack Room Ballads (1892), and in "Recessional" he captured a side of Queen Victoria's final jubilee that no one else dared to address.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-6-- With over 20 editions in print, what would justify publishing, or purchasing, another Jungle Book ? The answer is clearly Alexander's splendid and technically ravishing watercolor illustrations. Their stylized borders and overall background patterns recall--without slavishly imitating--Indian textiles and Indian book illustrations. The stunningly vibrant hues (especially the hot pinks, oranges, and electric blues) allude to the traditional colors of India but appeal to contemporary tastes for high-voltage tints. The details are evocative but spare (their scale makes the human figures unintelligible at a distance, but the many animal portraits maintain their effect across a room). With the recent reappearance of the Disney version in video and cartoon knockoffs, this edition's fine graphic vision is doubly welcome. In these numerous vignettes per double-page depictions, India is again the rich and exotic country of Kipling's romantic creation. --Patricia Dooley, University of Washington, Seattle (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
An attractive reissue of a classic children's book has attractive illustrations reflecting traditional Indian art. But typographical errors are common, and, although the fact is unmentioned, the text has been slightly abridged. From HORN BOOK 1991, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Necessarily vastly abridged to maintain the publisher's page count, and without referencing Kipling's idiom, this graphic novelization nonetheless offers readers a rich retelling. Pages pop with nicely varied frames that befit their content, and characters' speech and captions are appropriately assigned rather than being seemingly random text attributions. The deeply and broodingly colored images, however, are what make this a good read, with animal-appropriate movement, expressive faces, and animated body language. While certainly no substitute for Kipling's own storytelling prowess, this is, nonetheless, a worthwhile version to provide for visual learners, whether as a lead-in to the original or as a stand-alone experience. The tight binding may frustrate some but the book won't wear out.--Goldsmith, Francisca Copyright 2009 Booklist