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THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF BRITISH INDIA IN RUDYARD KIPLING'S “THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2014

Albert D. Pionke
Albert D. Pionke*
Affiliation:
The University of Alabama
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Extract

First published in The Phantom Rickshaw (1888), the fifth volume in A. H. Wheeler & Co.'s “Indian Railway Library” series, “The Man Who Would Be King” may be the best and is almost certainly the last story that Rudyard Kipling wrote while still living in India. It is, then, the culmination of an annus mirabilis that saw its twenty-three-year-old author publish six books, albeit short ones, and achieve widespread fame in India. He also garnered sufficient acclaim in England that he would decide to resign his editorial position at George Allen's two Anglo-Indian newspapers, the Civil and Military Gazette and the Pioneer, in favor of a literary life in London. In light of these biographical facts, readers might reasonably expect the story to offer a summative, even authoritative, conclusion about life and empire on the subcontinent that Kipling had represented so abundantly all year.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 42 , Issue 3: EDITORS' TOPIC: VICTORIAN INDIA , September 2014 , pp. 335 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

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