{"id":391,"date":"2015-12-30T13:00:34","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T13:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/?p=391"},"modified":"2020-04-29T14:29:45","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T14:29:45","slug":"150th-anniversary-of-rudyard-kipling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/2015\/12\/30\/150th-anniversary-of-rudyard-kipling\/","title":{"rendered":"150th Anniversary of the birth of Rudyard Kipling – December 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Lithograph<\/a>

Lithograph portrait of Rudyard Kipling by William Nicholson, 1899 (Pollard Collection)<\/p><\/div>\n

150 years ago, on 30th<\/sup> December 1865, Alice and John Lockwood Kipling welcomed their son, Joseph Rudyard, into the world. Rudyard Kipling would go on to become something of a celebrity, with notoriety as a \u2019poet of empire\u2019. Despite this reputation and his friendships with the likes of Cecil Rhodes and King George V, Kipling declined a knighthood, the Poet Laureateship and the Order of Merit; although he did accept other awards including the Nobel Prize for Literature (1907) and an honorary degree from the University of Durham (1907). After a perforated ulcer took his life on 18th<\/sup> January 1936, he was given a Westminster Abbey funeral – Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was among his pallbearers. He lies in Poets\u2019 Corner.<\/p>\n

Kipling\u2019s early years were spent in India \u2013 first in Bombay (now called Mumbai) and later in Lahore and Allahabad. (An 11-year interlude in England from the age of five was an unhappy period.) He found work as a journalist and editor, first with the Civil and Military Gazette<\/em> and then with its sister paper, the Pioneer<\/em>. Throughout this period, however, he was writing and publishing short stories and poems and his writing reflected the culture, language, sights, sounds and smells of India that he had fallen in love with as a child and was experiencing on adolescent insomnia-fuelled nocturnal walks. His writing was critically well-received and was popular in England.<\/p>\n

Hoping to leverage some of his fame, Kipling returned to the UK where he met agent and publisher, Wolcott Balestier. This proved to be a life-changing encounter: Kipling married Balestier\u2019s sister, Caroline (Carrie) in 1892, settled in her native America and had three children with her \u2013 Josephine, Elsie and John.  Kipling liked to be around children and flourished as a writer of juvenile fiction, enchanting boys and girls with works such as The Jungle Book<\/em> (1894) and penning parental advice, in verse, to his son in the poem \u2018If\u2019 (1895).<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Rikki<\/a>

\u2018Rikki Tikki Tavi the mongoose and cobra\u2019 by Charles Maurice Detmold for Rudyard Kipling\u2019s The Jungle Book<\/a>, 1902 (Pollard Collection)<\/p><\/div>\n

A publically sensationalised quarrel with brother-in-law, Beatty, and the death from pneumonia of Josephine drove Kipling into retreat in England. Again, he focussed on his writing, publishing Just So Stories<\/em> (1902) in tribute to Josephine. [Newcastle University Special Collections holds the 1955<\/a> reprint]<\/p>\n

As Kipling withdrew from public view, Europe prepared for war against Germany. Kipling supported the war, perceiving it to be a battle between civilisation and barbarism. He served as a war correspondent from the trenches in France and was keen for his son, John, to see active service, pulling strings to get him enlisted with the Irish Guards. John was killed at the Battle of Loos (September 1915) \u2013 he was 18 years old and his body has never been undisputedly identified. Kipling, distraught, turned his attention away from children\u2019s stories and towards involvement with the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission: he helped to create graveyards, advising on the language to be used for the memorial inscriptions; wrote a regimental history of the Irish Guards; and influenced the wording of the letter which would be sent, on the King\u2019s command, from Lord Derby (Secretary of State for War) to mourning relatives. By this time, Kipling\u2019s literary prominence was waning as the world tried to come to terms with the aftermath of the First World War and Kipling with his own grief.<\/p>\n

In 2011 the Friends of University Library<\/a> purchased a significant collection of Kipling\u2019s work in first and early editions; as well as material relating to Kipling, such as ephemera and cuttings which had been brought together by Mr Eric Pollard. The Pollard Collection<\/a> is accessible via the Library\u2019s online catalogue<\/a> and the Special Collections team invite as wide an audience as possible to use it. Kipling\u2019s work has been appraised and reappraised over the years and the Pollard Collection<\/a> demonstrates the breadth of his work.<\/p>\n

A Special Collections exhibition will draw upon the collection to remember Kipling in February 2016 \u2013 the year that marks the 80th anniversary of his death.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Kipling\u2019s<\/a>

Kipling\u2019s signature, from a letter to Lord Derby, 8th December 1917 (Manuscript Album)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) 150 years ago, on 30th December 1865, Alice and John Lockwood Kipling welcomed their son, Joseph Rudyard, into the world. Rudyard Kipling would go on to become something of a celebrity, with notoriety as a \u2019poet of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5894,"featured_media":392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[23,103,102,100,101],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-treasure-of-the-month","tag-childrens-literature","tag-english-literature","tag-pollard-collection","tag-rudyard-kipling","tag-the-jungle-book"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5894"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2610,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/2610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}