KIPLING'S POPULARITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15482, 13 December 1913, Page 4 (Supplement)

KIPLING'S POPULARITY.

EVIDENCE FROM AMERICA. That Kipling was the most popular among living poets was evidenced in England a few, months ago when tho necessity for choosing a new poet' laureate arose. Un all sides were found people who advocated his claims. He is, apparently just as popular in America, for of him a bookseller says — • : "Kipling is now and has been for some time one of our best sellers. Where ten years ago we sold one copy of Kiplim; we now sell ten. Of course this is an average, and in many instances we sell a great many more than that. 'Departmental Ditties' is still among his most popular books of verse, and I believe we sell more of that than any of the. others. It is one of the best known, and to the thousands of the younger generation who are just getting acquainted with Kipling's books it, of course, furnishes a striking introduction. 'The Seven Seas,' I believe, would, come next in poetry, while ' Kim' in the prose is one of the best sellers with us. From all ' 1 hear, people are more anxious to read that great epic of the East now than they ever were before "In his almost uncanny understanding and expression of human nature, and in his gift of knowing men and bringing out the real human character, he is as a writer more like Theodore Roosevelt in his neld as a statesman than any man I can think of. I think the comparison will be admitted, because of their common virility, understanding, and appeal to the strenuous manliness of every human being. " Kipling can talk to any man in his own terms. Take The Day's Work,' for instance, in it he talks 'to civil engineers, railroad engineers, sailors, marine engineers, and a dozen other distinct classes of men with a perfect understanding and an accurate technical knowledge of that man's trade or profession. Moreover, the trick is so turned that the technicalities do not mystify the layman. You see, having lived the life out there in India, lie well knows the heart and mind of the empire-builders and of the empire-pro-tectors, Kipling's beloved Tommy Atkins. "Th versatility of the man is o"ne of the things about which we are constantly hearing. Book-buyers never seem to cease to marvel at the range of his powers. Take, ( for instance, his "History of England ;' ho takes the subject from an angle entirely his own, and with a virility which lis alone can, display e gets behind ine nationalist movement and turns out a book which I believe will be one of the leading volumes of its kind for years to come. Certainly such unofficial indications as we have in Brentano's show that. ."Just as Roosevelt has done much for the inspiration of an ideal in the American people, Kipling has done more than any of us can realise toward the inspiration of the people of Great-Britain.' One of Kipling's signal achievements has been to make the tired business man" read poetry-at least his poetry:, "Everybody appreciates the fact that the average man is not a great lover of poetry but every man can appreciate the rhythm and swing of Kipling's deathless ballads, and from the way that books sell here 1 am confident they do. " Kipling's popularity has been a steady growth, and to-day we are selling many, many times as great a quantity of his work as we have before, in the last ten years. There is nothing unstable or ephemeral in the way Kipling's books are selling:now. They are selling very well indeed, and we hav e every reason to beJ '" e «"&; will continue to sell better Kipling is a standard author, and as such his books sell in complete set« now. where they used to sell in two or three volumes.. The public'has given unanimous expression of its pleasure in the complete uniform editions of Kipling, ana we find that th e expensive editions sell just as well as the cheaper ones. "Whenever one of our regular bookbuyers who is known as a lover of rare and expensive books conies in here we expect him to ask for Kipling, and we are seldom disappointed. We find that persons furnishing libraries almost invariably buy complete editions of Shakespeare, Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, George Eliot and Kipling. A ways a complete edition of Kipling is included. . "We hear a great deal of tlie revival of poetry, but I am conlidont that Kipling poems would have been just as popular to-day without any other poetical revival. "