Selected Poems

Selected Poems
ISBN: 9780140424317
Publication Date: 26 April 2001

Kipling's reputation as the unofficial Laureate of the British Empire has obscured the true nature of his poetic achievement. Far from being the Establishment figure of popular legend, he was a fiercely independent poet, opposed to the dominant political and literary tendencies of his age. His poems range from exhilarating celebrations of British expansion overseas, through vivid character sketches of soldiers and seamen, to enchanting poems for children, political invective and artistic manifestos.

In this selection Kipling's poems are presented in chronological order to reveal the scope and development, as well as the originality, of his work. It opens with Kipling satirizing the British India, and closes with him warning against the rise of Nazi Germany.

About The Author Rudyard Joseph Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was the author and illustrator of Beast and Man in India and his mother, Alice, was the sister of Lady Burne-Jones. In 1871 Kipling was brought home from India and spent five unhappy years with a foster family in Southsea, an experience he later drew on in The Light That Failed (1890). The years he spent at the United Services College, a school for officers' children, are depicted in Stalky and Co. (1899) and the character of Beetle is something of a self-portrait. It was during his time at the college that he began writing poetry and Schoolboy Lyrics was published privately in 1881.

In the following year he started work as a journalist in India, and while there, produced a body of work, stories, sketches and poems - notably Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) - which made him an instant literary celebrity when he returned to England in 1889. Barrack Room Ballads (1892) contains some of his most popular pieces, including 'Mandalay', 'Gunga...