Rudyard Kipling is the doyen of travel writers. His genius for evoking the sights, sounds and atmosphere of a place was crystallised in his fiction, in which he introduced Victorian readers to the drama and exoticism of the East. The teaming, dusty Grand Trunk Road springs to life off the pages of Kim, while the misty heights of imperial Simla provide an identifiable and almost tangible physical background to Plain Tales from the Hills. Kipling's poetry, journalism and letters also encapsulated the spirit of the places he visited, from Egypt, India and Brazil to the United States and Southern Africa.He was fascinated by the practicalities and potential of travel, the people encountered and experiences had. At a time when tourism was in its infancy, he prophetically reflected on the effects of mass transport and the 'globe trotters' who thronged to India. With his darting, universal mind, he was the first person to understand the relationship between travel and globalisation. "Kipling Abroad" gathers together some of the most descriptive and revealing of his travel writing, which has never before been published in one volume. Introduced and edited by Andrew Lycett, author of an acclaimed biography of Kipling, it captures the range, curiosity and sheer talent of one of our best loved authors, revealing as much about Kipling himself as it does about the places he visited.

Rudyard Kipling was an English short-story writer, novelist and poet, remembered for his celebration of British imperialism and heroism in India and Burma. Kipling was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (1907). His most popular works include The Jungle Book (1894) and The Just So Stories (1902), a collection of tales about how animals came to be the way they are today, also The Day's Work, a novel (1898). Book jacket.

KIPLING may be best known as a commentator on the British Empire, but he was also a vivid observer and chronicler of the sea - and of ships and all who sailed in them. For him the sea was the glue which bound the British Empire together. To reach distant lands, you needed to sail. So Kipling wrote copiously about his own voyages - to India, across the Pacific and Atlantic, down to South Africa and Australia - and about the voyages of others. Sailors were particular heroes of his, as adventurers who braved every kind of element and danger in order to reach distant lands. In writing about them, he was enthralled by the romance of the sea, touching on everything from pirates to technical changes in ships. His output reflected his deep historical understanding, so he could write equally about three sailors reminiscing about their shipwreck with St Paul off Malta in 66ad and a ship on fire in the Indian Ocean. He was also a great advocate of the navy. He wrote about its exploits, customs, history and contemporary role in a variety of different forms. At all stages of his life Kipling peppered his many letters with observations about the sea, encompassing his own voyages and his other nautical interests. Edited and with a commentary by Kipling expert and author of the much praised Kipling Abroad, Kipling and the Sea illuminates a side of Kipling's work that has for too long languished in the shadows.

Featuring an internationally distinguished list of contributors, Kipling and Beyond reassesses Kipling's texts and their reception in order to explore new approaches in postcolonial studies. The collection asks why Kipling continues to be a significant cultural icon and what this legacy means in the context of today's Anglo-American globalization.

Writer Rudyard Kipling's ill-fated attempt to settle down in his American wife's small Vermont town gets a worshipful once-over through the eyes of (fictional) young Mary Sadiedubbed "Kitty" by her father after the cat killed by curiosity. It's an appropriate moniker, as Kitty is forever asking questions of her parents and other grownupsa device the author leans on heavily to describe and to explain events that take place, largely, offstage. Kipling's efforts to help out a ne'er-do-well brother-in-law end in criminal charges and ultimately drive the writer back to England. Before he goes, though, he makes a big impression on Kitty, as a sensitive observer with his own bottomless well of curiosity: "Nothing," she writes, "was just ordinary to Mr. Kipling." Occasional ink drawings place dignified characters in peaceful rural settings. Though weighed down by an excess of historical detail (not to mention a substantial afterword and bibliography), the tale does bring this great writer closer to his modern audience of Best Beloveds, without idealizing either the man or his now-offensive politics. (Fiction. 10-12) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.