The Unforgiving Minute: A Life of Rudyard Kipling - Softcover

Ricketts, Harry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0712664718 ISBN 13: 9780712664714

Publisher: Pimlico, 2000

Synopsis

The stories of Rudyard Kipling are read all over the world, by people of all ages, yet no biography has fully explored the complex link between his fascinating life and his writing; untill this one. Harry Ricketts brings Kipling vividly and touchingly to life - his traumatic childhood, split between India and England (haunting the powerful Jungle Books); his youth as a reporter in India, troubled by love and politics; his entry into London literary life and his often hilarious travels in America. Ricketts explores Kiplings's imperialism and radicaism, and traces his increasing reclusiveness after his son's death in the First World War. The dramatic life is backed by subtle readings of the works , from the BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS to KIM and STALKY AND CO. With its strong narrative drive, this biography entrals and moves, while shining a strong new light on a great writer.

About this title

Review

It came as a shock when Rudyard Kipling's "If" was recently voted the UK's favourite poem. This, after all, was a shopping list of what makes "a man", and, from what we vaguely knew of Kipling--a bit of colonialist Jungle Book washed down with the public school japes of Stalky and Co--his ideal "man" was likely to be a throwback to unenlightened Empire days: Great Britishness at its most embarrassing. So now seems an ideal time to review the man behind the verse. With an eye for the telling domestic anecdote, Ricketts refuses to let Kipling have the last word on his own life, constantly pointing up the inconsistencies in Kipling's political positions and actions and locating the impetus for Kipling's obsession with hatred and orphanhood in his troubled childhood. Drawing heavily on letters and newspapers as well as Kipling's own personal and professional writings, Ricketts conjures up Rud's multiple worlds--from the Burne-Jones's cultural gatherings to a vivid fin-de-siecle Lahore to his latter, painful days in Sussex. With an admirable ability to move from Indian politics to family gossip within a paragraph, Ricketts gives us a Kipling whose complex life now demands a reconsideration of his work. --Alan Stewart

Book Description

A vivid study of Kipling's life in relation to his work, cutting through the myths that surround him.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pimlico
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0712664718
• ISBN 13: 9780712664714
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448