The Works of Rudyard Kipling: One Volume Edition
1927
The Works of Rudyard Kipling: One Volume Edition
1927
This 1927 collected edition gathers Kipling's most vital work: the sharp satirical verses of "Departmental Ditties," the haunting plains of Punjab in the Barrack-Room Ballads, and the prose masterpieces that made him the first English-language Nobel laureate in literature. Kipling wrote with ruthless precision about the British Empire's presence in India, its absurdities, its cruelties, its peculiar beauty. His facility with language is undeniable, his rhythms addictive. Whether he's inhabiting the mind of a colonial administrator or a simple soldier, Kipling captures the textures of empire with a poet's ear and a journalist's eye. The India that emerges from these pages is neither romantic fantasy nor simple condemnation, it's something stranger: a place of profound cultural collision, rendered by someone who loved it and was part of its violence. For readers willing to engage with difficult material, this collection offers unmatched access to one of English literature's most gifted and controversial voices.
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“A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.””
— Rudyard Kipling
“Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too seriously”
— Rudyard Kipling
“It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilised Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight.””
— Rudyard Kipling
“Every man is entitled to his own religious opinions; but no man – least of all a junior – has a right to thrust these down other men’s throats.””
— Rudyard Kipling
“Then says Mrs. Hauksbee to me – she looked a trifle faded and jaded in the lamplight: “Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.””
— Rudyard Kipling
“When a man does good work out of all proportion to his pay, in seven cases out of nine there is a woman at the back of the virtue. The two exceptions must have suffered from sunstroke.All kinds of magic are out of date and done away with, except in India, where nothing changes in spite of the shiny top-scum stuff that people call "civilization".””
— Rudyard Kipling
“If men had not this delusion as to the ultra-importance of their own particular employments, I suppose that they would sit down and kill themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when the listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin.””
— Rudyard Kipling
“No jury, we knew, could convict a man on the criminal count on native evidence in a land where you can buy a murder-charge, including the corpse, all complete for fifty-four rupees””
— Rudyard Kipling
“I explained as much as I knew of the seal-cutter’s way of jadoo; but her argument was much more simple: “The magic that is always demanding gifts is no true magic,” said she.””
— Rudyard Kipling
