Selected Poems

Description

Kipling's reputation as the unofficial Laureate of the British Empire has obscured the true nature and scope of his poetic achievement. 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. Here, Kipling's poems are presented in chronological order to reveal the development, as well as the originality, of his work.

Rudyard Joseph Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 but spent most of his childhood in England. He returned to India in 1881 as a journalist and also wrote stories, sketches and poems. His literary reputation was established with Plain Tales from the Hills (1888). Today he is best remembered for The Jungle Book and Kim. He was the first English writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907. Before his retirement, Peter Keating was reader in English at Edinburgh. He is now a full-time writer.