Rudyard Kipling (Literary Lives)

In RUDYARD KIPLING (1975), Kingsley Amis in 128 packed pages surveys the life of Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936). Also how that life intertwined with Kipling's huge volume of written work. More than a third of this book is filled with enlightening black and white illustrations, cartoons, photographs and newspaper clippings. *** Kingsley Amis notes that from around 1890 to 1930 Kipling was the most widely read poetry and short story writer in the English-speaking world. For the next forty years he was criticized for being racist ("Take up the white man's burden," he exhorted the Americans after their wresting the Philippines from Spain); for jingoistic praise of all things British, including the Empire, and for other alleged weaknesses. But he has since been rehabilitated as a man who wrote about things inadequately noticed by most others: India, the British Raj, travel, imperial politics and administration and more. *** Kipling has been admired by D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot and other important writers. Writes Kingsley Amis: "a large amount (of Kipling's work) can now be seen to be of the highest quality. The diverseness of his poetry alone is wihout parallel in our language, and, among the varied forms in which he excelled, the ones he invented himself predominate. With all his breadth there went the gift of distilling a whole thought into a few memorable words. No modern writer has added more phrases to the language." *** Uniquely after Charles Dickens, Kipling spoke to all levels of society, from royalty to soldiers, to women, to children, to lovers of poetry and to scholars, too. Amis's RUDYARD KIPLING is a handsome, rewarding book. Display it proudly on your coffee table. Reach for it when you are snugly in bed at night. -OOO-