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.
It was perhaps EB
's high point as a poet when she had five pieces included in an anthology that also featured work by John Masefield
, Walter de la Mare
, and Rudyard Kipling
.
Stoney, Barbara. Enid Blyton. Hodder and Stoughton, 1974.
49
Dedications
E. Nesbit
EN
's collaborations with Oswald Barron
began with The Life-Lamp, which appeared in Atalanta in June 1893. They collaborated again in several genres: in A Family Novelette (a farce performed in a public hall...
Dedications
Louisa Baldwin
The original edition of nine stories was illustrated by J. Ayton Symington
.
Rosemary's mother was probably her most important teacher. She told her stories which, no matter how outlandish and fantastic, the very young Rosemary accepted as literal truth; she later imparted all kinds of varied information...
Education
Gwen Moffat
When as a child she longed for travel and wild places, she said, Kipling
and Ella Maillart
became my gods.
Moffat, Gwen. Space Below My Feet. Houghton Mifflin, Riverside Press, 1961.
She was, however, always reading as a child: she and her sister had few books, but knew by heart whole chapters of the ones they did have. As a child Susan hated Mrs Mortimer
's...
Education
Maya Angelou
Marguerite Johnson had already become a voracious reader, both of Black writers and of canonical dead white males. Shakespeare
, she wrote later, was my first white love.
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Heinemann New Windmill Series, 1995.
12
She also enjoyed and respected...
Education
Diana Athill
DA
was taught at home by governesses (seven successively before she was sent to school), who followed a correspondence course designed for home schooling which was known as Parents Educational National Union
. A French...
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...
Education
Ruth Padel
RP
says the earliest book she can remember was Kipling
's Jungle Book (which she learned by heart, along with many poems about animals).
Ruth Padel.
Education Interview, the Independent
Bagheera the black panther was my first...
Education
Margaret Haig, Viscountess Rhondda
Taught by governesses until she was thirteen, Margaret Haig Thomas learned to read at about five. She was taught German and French, and she also learned Welsh as a child but did not retain it...
Family and Intimate relationships
Angela Thirkell
Stanley Baldwin
, later Prime Minister, and the poet and story-writer Rudyard Kipling
, were both cousins of AT
's mother. Kipling entered fully into the playing of a long-running English Civil War game with...
Family and Intimate relationships
Iris Tree
Writer, critic, and caricaturist Sir Max Beerbohm
was IT
's half-uncle, the youngest son from Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's father's second marriage. Best remembered for his drawings and caricatures of the famous, Beerbohm also wrote...
The Birkenhead, a 1,400-ton paddle-wheel steamer carrying troops and civilians from England to South Africa, ran aground and sank; about five hundred men died, almost all of them soldiers.
9 April 1887
Following the appeal judgment which ordered her to cohabit with her husband, Dadaji Bhikaji
, a letter by Rukhmabai
appeared in the LondonTimes.
2 September 1914
The British War Propaganda Bureau
(newly formed along the lines of a similar body in Germany) summoned twenty-five writers to discuss the production of texts that would boost national feeling and the war effort.
25 September 1915
A British offensive began at Loos, only to end some days later after heavy losses.
1981
Valerie Gillies
published Kim: Notes, a study guide for Rudyard Kipling
's novel.
1 July 2007
British publisher Tank Books
released a series of classic books, Tales to Take Your Breath Away, designed to mimic cigarette packets—the same size, packaged in flip-top cartons with silver foil wrapping and sealed in cellophane.
