MR RUDYARD KIPLING.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 44, 31 October 1891, Page 540

MR RUDYARD KIPLING.

It is little more than two years since the dove-cotes of literary London were thrown into an extraordinary flutter by the appearance in them of a new writer of unique name —so unique that sceptical persons of imaginative temperament were ready to construct plausible theories proving this new writer to be a myth. In an unprecedently short time the tales and articles under the signature of Radyard Kipling became so much in demand that editors were represented as toiling in vain after the fortunate author in the effort to secure his valuable services. Gradually the mist of ambiguity cleared away, and the personality of Mr Kipling loomed out visibly before the world, as a man of Anglo - Indian origin. In this he resembles the great Thackeray ; but while the latter could only pretend to the merest shadow of the AngloIndian name, having left that country in early boyhood, Mr Kipling has been long resident amid all the various influences of our Indian Empire, and although his vehicle of expression is literary English, his ideas, like his name, have a unique flavour, such as strikes piquantly upon the palate of the reading public of England. The aspects of Oriental life, and more especially the characteristics of the isolated section of our race who dominate the millions of India, came from his pen with all the aroma of novelty, and this doubtless explains in a great measure the phenomenal rapidity with which he has risen in the literary world. The following are the facts forming the outline of Mr Kipling’s career. He was born in 1864, and is the son of Mr John Lock wood Kipling, C.1.E., head of the Lahore School of Art. After having received his early education at the United Service College, Westward Ho, North Devon, he returned to India in 1882. There he officiated as sub-editor of the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette, and was special correspondent for that paper, and for the Pioneer of Allahabad on the frontier at Rajputana and elsewhere, He published in India ‘ Departmental Ditties ’ and ‘ Plain Tales from the Hills,’ followed by six small books on military, native, and social life in India. He left India, in 1889, and travelled in China, Japan, and America, and thence to England. Mr Kipling is now on his way to Samoa to visit Mr Stevenson.