Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Rudyard Kipling
-
Standard Name: Kipling, Rudyard
Birth Name: Joseph Rudyard Kipling
An Indian-born English journalist, novelist, and travel writer, best-known for short stories, poetry, and children's books, RK
won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He never felt like a native in England although he spent most of his life there, lived in other countries as well, and never saw India after his mid-twenties. He was convinced of the moral mission of the British empire, seeing devoted heroism in its workers but pettiness and bureaucracy in its administration. He writes of India as an insider and his Indian writings were his best loved in England. His increasingly conservative politics seeped into his writing later in his career and lost him some of the immense, immediate public interest that his early work had garnered.
Most of the letters here are addressed to CL
's mother, her editor-sister, and two close friends who were also relations, her aunt Theresa Earle
and her cousin Adela Smith
.
Elizabeth Edith, Countess of Balfour, and Constance Lytton. “Preface, Introduction”. Letters of Constance Lytton, edited by Elizabeth Edith, Countess of Balfour and Elizabeth Edith, Countess of Balfour, Heinemann, p. v, xi - xv.
v
Hating the round...
Publishing
Hannah Lynch
HL
reviewed French writers and writings for the Contemporary Review and for the Fortnightly Review, where her article on the French playwright and novelist Paul Hervieu
appeared in October 1896 and she reviewed A. Mary F. Robinson
Leisure and Society
Eliza Lynn Linton
She enjoyed going to and hosting prominent literary and social receptions. Her guests included a wide range of people: popular writers such as Rudyard Kipling
, Marie Corelli
, and Frank Harris
; luminaries of...
Textual Features
Elizabeth B. Lester
This work quotes Cowper
on the title-page. The short stories (genuinely short this time) include A Few Days from My Journal (which opens with Johnson
's well-known remark to Boswell
about the pleasure of driving...
Education
Doris Lessing
Before attending school and after she left, Doris educated herself by reading. Her parents possessed copies of the classics, like Scott
, Dickens
, and Kipling
. She read widely in the nineteenth century—her favourites...
Friends, Associates
Anna Leonowens
AL
received a special invitation to meet Rudyard Kipling
when he visited Montreal.
Dow, Leslie Smith. Anna Leonowens: A Life Beyond The King and I. Pottersfield.
ML
's final publication was also her last literary biography: From Palm to Pine: Rudyard Kipling
Abroad and at Home.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Occupation
Marghanita Laski
ML
's high public profile largely resulted from her radio work. One of her earliest wireless programmes, The Brains Trust, first went on air on 1 January 1941. In this highly intelligent quiz series...
Textual Production
Marghanita Laski
ML
felt that Kipling
was undervalued as a poet by her generation, for political rather than literary reasons. She selected and edited a volume of his poems (Kipling's English History) for the BBC
in 1974.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Friends, Associates
Mary Kingsley
During her brief time in South Africa Kingsley frequently visited Rudyard Kipling
. They had much to discuss although she did not agree with his white man's burden approach to African politics and culture.
Frank, Katherine. A Voyager Out: The Life of Mary Kingsley. Houghton Mifflin.
292
Intertextuality and Influence
Jennifer Johnston
The title is quoted from Kipling
's Recessional, a poem about the end of empire.
Textual Production
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
RPJ
issued a new volume of stories: East into Upper East: Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi.
The title carries a memory of Kipling
's Plain Tales from the Hills, 1888.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Literary responses
Sarah Orne Jewett
The Feminist Companion describes the novel as her masterpiece; realistic in style and innovative in form, it pursues the matriarchal theme explored in much of her work.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
The central character, a harried female writer, comes...
Textual Production
Naomi Jacob
Under her pseudonym of Ellington Gray, NJ
published a novel entitled Saffroned Bridesails, a phrase which she found in a poem by Kipling
.