Book SynopsisKim tells the story of Kimball O’Hara, an orphaned Irish boy growing up in late nineteenth-century India, and his quest for identity as he strives to reconcile his Western inheritance with the Indian life he has always known. This edition sets the novel in the context of the historical period and addresses Kipling’s ambivalent relationship with India, the Empire’s treatment of the “other” classes and races who worked to maintain the British presence in India, and the place of Kim in Kipling’s career as a writer.Appendices include contemporary reviews of the novel and historical documents on Britain’s and Russia’s struggle for control of Asia, Indian colonization, and the writing of Kim.Trade Review“Máire ní Fhlathúin’s new edition of Kim is a welcome event. The substantial and scholarly, yet accessible, introduction contextualises the novel in important new ways. This is complemented by a diverse range of supplementary material, which allows the reader to appreciate more clearly some of the debates, texts, and contexts by which Kipling was influenced as he wrote his masterpiece. This is an edition that will appeal alike to the student, scholar, and general reader.” ― Bart Moore-Gilbert, Goldsmiths College, University of LondonTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionRudyard Kipling: A Brief ChronologyA Note on the TextKimAppendix A: The Writing of Kim
From Rudyard Kipling, Something of Myself (1937)
Rudyard Kipling, “Lispeth” (1890)
From Rudyard Kipling, “Kim o’ the ’Rishti”
Appendix B: Contemporary Responses to Kim
From Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (December 1901)
From George Moore, “Avowals V: Kipling and Loti,” Pall Mall Magazine (July 1904)
From Dixon Scott, “Rudyard Kipling,” Bookman (December 1912)
From Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys (1910)
Appendix C: The Great Game and the Survey of India
From the Correspondence of Arthur Conolly (1889)
From G.B. Malleson, The Russo-Afghan Question and the Invasion of India (1885)
From Archibald R. Colquhoun, Russia against India: The Struggle for Asia (1900)
From Charles E.D. Black, A Memoir on the Indian Surveys, 1875-1890 (1891)
Appendix D: Colonizers and Colonized
From Evelyn Baring, Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt (1908)
From Archibald R. Colquhoun, Russia against India: The Struggle for Asia (1900)
From F. Anstey, Baboo Jabberjee B.A. (1897)
From T.B. Macaulay, “The Necessity of English Education” (1835)
Appendix E: Buddhism in Victorian Britain
From William Wilson Hunter, The Indian Empire (1882)
Rudyard Kipling, “Buddha at Kamakura” (1892)
From Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia (1908)
Works Cited / Recommended Reading
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