Rudyard Kipling

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling. Born in Bombay in 1865, Kipling has been described as the poet of Empire, celebrated for fictional works including Kim and The Jungle Book. Today his poem ‘If–’ remains one of the best known in the English language. Kipling was amongst the first writers in English to develop the short story as a literary form in its own right, and was the first British recipient of a Nobel Prize for Literature. A literary celebrity of the Edwardian era, Kipling’s work for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission played a major role in Britain’s cultural response to the First World War.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Howard Booth No other episodes
  Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Manchester
• Daniel Karlin 3 episodes
  Winterstoke Professor of English Literature at the University of Bristol
• Jan Montefiore No other episodes
  Professor of Twentieth Century English Literature at the University of Kent

Reading list

• Kipling Sahib: India and the Making of Rudyard Kipling 1865-1900
  Charles Allen (Abacus, 2008) Google Books →
• The Cambridge Companion to Rudyard Kipling
  Howard J. Booth (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Work
  Charles Carrington (Macmillan, 1955) Google Books →
• A Choice of Kipling's Verse
  T. S. Eliot (ed.) (Faber & Faber, 1941) Google Books →
• Kim
  Rudyard Kipling (ed. Cedric Watts) (Wordsworth Editions, 1901) Google Books →
• The Jungle Books
  Rudyard Kipling (ed. W. W. Robson) (Oxford Paperbacks, 1894) Google Books →
• Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling
  Rudyard Kipling (Wordsworth Editions ) Google Books →
• The Man Who Would be King and Other Stories
  Rudyard Kipling (ed. Jan Montefiore) (Penguin Classics, 2011) Google Books →
• Rudyard Kipling
  Andrew Lycett (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999) Google Books →
• Rudyard Kipling: Writers and their Work
  Jan Montefiore (Northcote House Publishers Ltd, 2007) Google Books →
• In Time's Eye: Essays on Rudyard Kipling
  Jan Montefiore (Manchester University Press, 2013) Google Books →
• My Country Right or Left 1940-1943: The Collected Essays Journalism & Letters of George Orwell volume 2
  George Orwell (David R Godine, 2000) Google Books →
• The Unforgiving Minute: A Life of Rudyard Kipling
  Harry Ricketts (Chatto, 1999) Google Books →
• The Art of Rudyard Kipling
  J. M. S. Tompkins (Methuen, 1959) Google Books →

Related episodes

• Wilfred Owen
  
  27 Oct, 2022 820 English and Old English literatures
• The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
  
  22 May, 2014 890 Other literatures
• Dylan Thomas
  
  16 Jun, 2022 820 English and Old English literatures
• Auden
  
  19 Dec, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures
• Thomas Hardy’s Poetry
  
  13 Jan, 2022 820 English and Old English literatures
• Lyrical Ballads
  
  8 Mar, 2012 820 English and Old English literatures
• The Later Romantics
  
  15 Apr, 2004 820 English and Old English literatures
• The Prelude
  
  22 Nov, 2007 820 English and Old English literatures
• Robert Burns
  
  24 Oct, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
  
  21 Mar, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures
• Pope
  
  9 Nov, 2006 820 English and Old English literatures
• Rumi’s Poetry
  
  11 Feb, 2016 890 Other literatures
• Chaucer
  
  9 Feb, 2006 820 English and Old English literatures
• Writing and Political Oppression
  
  8 Apr, 1999 320 Political science
• Johnson
  
  27 Oct, 2005 820 English and Old English literatures
• Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
  
  6 Jan, 2011 820 English and Old English literatures
• Tagore
  
  7 May, 2015 920 Biography and genealogy
• The Romantics
  
  12 Oct, 2000 820 English and Old English literatures
• Beowulf
  
  5 Mar, 2015 820 English and Old English literatures
• Songs of Innocence and of Experience
  
  23 Jun, 2016 820 English and Old English literatures

---

Programme ID: b04l3852

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04l3852

Auto-category: 823.912 (English literature, 19th & 20th centuries)