"A Book of Words, Kipling's own selection of his speeches published in 1928, reflects a variety of topics and audiences. He spoke to schoolboys about literature, to Brazilians about "the spirit of the Latin," to the Royal Geographical Society about travel, to navy men about sailors, to ship owners about shipping, to university students about independence. The list goes on, revealing interests and activities far more various than most men of letters would ever think of undertaking. Before the end of his life Kipling added a few more speeches to the version of the book that appeared, posthumously, in the splendid Sussex Edition of his collected works. Even so, many of his speeches have remained uncollected and virtually unknown." "A Second Book of Words collects what Kipling left uncollected. The speeches in this new book date from 1884 to 1935. We see Kipling at different moments before different audiences. We hear how he talked to his Sussex neighbors, or how he addressed a parliamentary committee, or a South African election meeting, or a club of London doctors, or his fellow honorary degree recipients at Cambridge. The more substantial, formal speeches are equally various, marked by Kipling s mastery of language, a few passing over into a violent extravagance of feeling - the attack on the Liberal government in the speech of 16 May 1914 or the speech on war aims of 15 February 1918. Usually, however, the tone is urbane, the artistic aim to instruct through delight. Kipling knew that the maker of speeches and the poet were subject to the same law: "Unless they please they are not heard at all."" "A Second Book of Words adds another forty-eight speeches to the thirty-eight that Kipling chose to make public, printing all the known uncollected speeches - long or short, carefully meditated or spontaneous, tendentious or diplomatic. Another twenty-five for which no text has so far been found are identified, as are the speeches that he is known to have written for members of the royal family." "Professor Pinney, editor of the six-volume The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, brings his extensive knowledge of Kipling s life and writings to the volume with an informative introduction, headnotes to contextualize each speech, and a complete checklist of all the speeches. Altogether, the edition is a considerable contribution to Kipling s canon and to an important but neglected area of the Kipling bibliography." --Book Jacket.

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) is among the most popular, acclaimed and controversial of writers in English. His books have sold in great numbers, and he remains the youngest writer to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Many associate Kipling with poems such as 'If–', his novel Kim, his pioneering use of the short story form and such works for children as the Just So Stories. For others, though, Kipling is the very symbol of the British Empire and a belligerent approach to other peoples and races. This Companion explores Kipling's main themes and texts, the different genres in which he worked and the various phases of his career. It also examines the 'afterlives' of his texts in postcolonial writing and through adaptations of his work. With a chronology and guide to further reading, this book serves as a useful introduction for students of literature and of Empire and its after effects.

'Hear and attend and listen...' Rudyard Kipling is a supreme master of the short story in English and a poet of brilliant gifts. His energy and inventiveness poured themselves into every kind of tale, from the bleakest of fables to the richest of comedies, and he illuminated every aspect of human behaviour, of which he was a fascinated (and sometimes appalled) observer. This generous selection of stories and poems, first published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series, covers the full range of Kipling's career from the youthful volumes that brought him fame as the chronicler of British India, to the bittersweet fruits of age and bereavement in the aftermath of the First World War. It includes stories such as 'The Man who would be King', 'Mrs Bathurst', and 'Mary Postgate', and poems from Barrack-Room Ballads and other collections. In his introduction and notes Daniel Karlin addresses the controversial political engagement of Kipling's art, and the sources of its imaginative power.