To view prices and purchase online, please login or create an account now.



Kipling Sahib: India and the Making of Rudyard Kipling 1865-1900

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title Kipling Sahib: India and the Making of Rudyard Kipling 1865-1900
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Charles Allen
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:448
Dimensions(mm): Height 198,Width 128
Category/GenreBiographies and autobiography
ISBN/Barcode 9780349116853
ClassificationsDewey:828.809
Audience
General
Illustrations Section: 16, Integrated: 16, b/w pix

Publishing Details

Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Imprint Abacus
Publication Date 4 September 2008
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 and spent his early years there, before being sent, aged six, to England, a desperately unhappy experience. Charles Allen's great-grandfather brought the sixteen-year-old Kipling out to Lahore to work on The Civil and Military Gazette with the words 'Kipling will do', and thus set young Rudyard on his literary course. And so it was that at the start of the cold weather of 1882 he stepped ashore at Bombay on 18 October 1882 - 'a prince entering his kingdom'. He stayed for seven years during which he wrote the work that established him as a popular and critical, sometimes controversial, success. Charles Allen has written a brilliant account of those years - of an Indian childhood and coming of age, of abandonment in England, of family and Empire. He traces the Indian experiences of Kipling's parents, Lockwood and Alice and reveals what kind of culture the young writer was born into and then returned to when still a teenager. It is a work of fantastic sympathy for a man - though not blind to Kipling s failings - and the country he loved.

Author Biography

Charles Allen is the author of a number of bestselling books about Indian and the colonial experience elsewhere. A traveller, historian and master storyteller he is one of the great chroniclers of India.

Reviews

'Those who relish Allen's India books will not be disappointed ... Rich in instruction for the current administration in, say, Basra - and better still, it's vintage Charles Allen' John Keay, LITERARY REVIEW 'Allen tells his complex story with concision, insight and wide-ranging vision' SUNDAY TIMES 'Compelling' TIMES 'A fascinating new book' SPECTATOR 'Allen marshals his formidable knowledge of British India to considerable effect ... A valuable guide' SCOTSMAN