Rudyard Kipling
Spine number 01
Departmental Ditties and Other Verses
Office rivalries, courtship and the social codes of British India become subjects for brisk, often satirical verse. The volume combines invented characters and situations with reflective poems; first published in 1886, it grew through several expanded editions.
1886 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction
Spine number 02
Plain Tales from the Hills
Officials, soldiers and families negotiate the pleasures and injuries of life in colonial India, where a rumour or a careless promise can alter a reputation. These compact stories move quickly from social comedy to cruelty and loss. The 1888 collection gathered much of Kipling’s early newspaper fiction.
1888 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 03
Soldiers Three and Other Stories
The soldiers Mulvaney, Learoyd and Ortheris tell stories of barrack life, friendship and violence, alongside scenes of marriage and Indian life beyond the regiment. This entry represents the expanded 1890 volume, bringing together Soldiers Three, The Story of the Gadsbys and In Black and White, originally issued separately in 1888–1889.
1890 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 04
Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories
Children cross boundaries they scarcely understand, adults hide their motives, and apparently secure lives are disturbed by fear or ambition. This 1890 collected volume brings together Under the Deodars, The Phantom Rickshaw and Wee Willie Winkie, first issued separately in 1889. Its stories include The Man Who Would Be King and Baa Baa, Black Sheep.
1890 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 05
The Light That Failed
War artist Dick Heldar tries to reconcile professional success with his attachment to Maisie, an artist determined to pursue her own work. Their conflicting ambitions unfold in a novel about seeing, possession and the costs of artistic commitment. The full 1891 book differs from the shorter magazine version, which had another ending.
1891 · book · Fiction
Spine number 06
Life’s Handicap
Soldiers’ recollections, private households and encounters with the uncanny expose lives that public conventions cannot fully explain. Without Benefit of Clergy centres on an Englishman’s hidden domestic life with Ameera, while other tales move into barrack humour and horror. The 1891 volume brings together stories previously scattered across periodicals and earlier collections.
1891 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 07
Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses
Marching rhythms and colloquial speakers bring soldiers’ complaints, loyalties and memories into verse. Poems including Tommy, Gunga Din and Mandalay sit beside ballads and wider reflections on human conduct. Published in 1892, the volume combines imagined voices and narratives with public and reflective poetry.
1892 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction
Spine number 08
The Naulahka: A Story of West and East
American entrepreneur Nick Tarvin travels to India with an eye on a valuable necklace and the future of his Colorado town, while Kate Sheriff hopes to provide medical help to women. Their purposes meet court politics in an adventure shaped by American ambition and colonial assumptions. This entry covers the whole novel jointly written with Wolcott Balestier, issued in book form in 1892 after serialisation began in 1891.
1892 · book · Fiction · Collaboration
Spine number 09
Many Inventions
Soldiers, sailors and Londoners find themselves in stories where ordinary experience can turn towards fantasy or the inexplicable. The collection includes In the Rukh, Mowgli’s first appearance in print, and The Finest Story in the World, about a young man with extraordinary memories. Published in 1893, it gathers work written after Kipling left India.
1893 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 10
The Jungle Book
Mowgli grows up among wolves, learning the laws and loyalties of the jungle while facing the tiger Shere Khan. Other stories follow a mongoose, a white seal and an elephant-handler’s son, giving the collection a wider cast than Mowgli alone. First collected in 1894, the tales are accompanied by poems.
1894 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 11
The Second Jungle Book
Mowgli’s place among animals and people becomes more difficult as he grows older and meets new threats. Stories set beyond his jungle include a journey through an Arctic landscape and an Indian holy man’s encounter with danger. This second collection appeared in 1895, extending the first book’s linked tales and verse.
1895 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 12
The Seven Seas
Sailors, engineers and soldiers speak across a collection preoccupied with work, movement and Britain’s imperial connections. McAndrew’s Hymn gives a ship’s engineer a long, argumentative voice, while other poems take the form of songs and ballads. Published in 1896, the book combines fictional speakers with political and reflective verse.
1896 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction
Spine number 13
Captains Courageous
Rescued after falling from an ocean liner, wealthy teenager Harvey Cheyne must earn his place aboard a fishing schooner on the Grand Banks. The unfamiliar routines of the crew give this coming-of-age adventure its language, pace and practical detail. Serialised in 1896–1897, the novel appeared as a book in 1897.
1897 · book · Fiction
Spine number 14
The Day’s Work
Bridge-builders, seafarers and workers face demands that test both their skill and their loyalties. Ships, horses and a locomotive also acquire voices, extending the question of how individuals learn to work together. Collected in 1898, these stories range across India, America, England and the sea.
1898 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 15
Stalky & Co.
Stalky, McTurk and Beetle turn boarding-school life into a contest of tactics, alliances and carefully planned retaliation. The linked stories bring a sharp edge to school comedy, questioning the adults’ accounts of discipline and fair play. This entry represents the nine-story collection of 1899; additional stories were gathered in The Complete Stalky & Co. in 1929.
1899 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 16
From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches
Kipling observes cities, transport, work and travel with a reporter’s appetite for detail and a traveller’s readiness to judge. This two-volume collection includes journeys through India, East Asia and America alongside the fictional sketches of The Smith Administration, giving it a mixed classification. First collected in this form in 1899, the material largely comes from his earlier journalism.
1899 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction
Spine number 17
Kim
Kimball O’Hara, an Irish orphan brought up in India, joins a Tibetan lama’s spiritual search while becoming entangled in British intelligence work. Their journey moves through crowded roads, railway carriages and changing social worlds, making identity a matter of language, loyalty and performance. The book appeared in 1901 after magazine serialisation began in 1900.
1901 · book · Fiction
Spine number 18
Just So Stories
An inquisitive elephant, an independent cat and other creatures inhabit playful explanations of how the world acquired its familiar features. Repetition, invented language and a narrator who addresses the listener make the stories especially suited to reading aloud. The 1902 collection includes Kipling’s own illustrations as well as accompanying poems.
1902 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 19
The Five Nations
Public declarations about empire sit beside soldiers’ voices shaped by the South African War. The collection includes Recessional, with its anxiety about national pride, and poems concerned with service, responsibility and defeat. Published in 1903, it combines dramatic invention with political argument and reflection.
1903 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction
Spine number 20
Traffics and Discoveries
Motor travel, wireless experiments and military routines open into stories of incomplete knowledge and unexpected encounters. Comedy shares space with bereavement and the uncanny, particularly in They and Mrs Bathurst. The 1904 collection asks readers to piece together motives and events from what its speakers reveal or withhold.
1904 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 21
Puck of Pook’s Hill
Two children in Sussex meet Puck, who brings figures from the past to tell their stories. Roman service, Norman settlement and medieval bargaining make history something encountered in the fields and paths around home. Published in 1906, the linked tales alternate with poems and treat the past through imaginative storytelling.
1906 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 22
Actions and Reactions
An American couple settling in Sussex, an unhappy household and the crew of a future airship inhabit a collection of sharply different worlds. The stories explore how communities work, what binds people to a place and what happens when a system is disturbed. First collected in 1909, the volume includes With the Night Mail, Kipling’s speculative account of aerial transport.
1909 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 23
Rewards and Fairies
Dan and Una again meet people from the past through Puck, hearing stories of craft, leadership and decisions made under pressure. The tales and their accompanying poems often approach the same questions from different angles. Published in 1910 as a companion to Puck of Pook’s Hill, the volume includes the poem If—.
1910 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 24
A Diversity of Creatures
A future society governed from the air, a village caught in a publicity campaign and households touched by war appear in this varied collection. Practical jokes and speculative inventions give way to the disturbing pressures of hatred and loss. Published in 1917, it includes As Easy as A.B.C., The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat and Mary Postgate.
1917 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 25
The Years Between
Political argument, wartime anger and the remembrance of the dead run through poems written across the years before and during the First World War. Short epitaphs place individual voices beside declarations about nations and duty. Collected in 1919, the volume combines imagined speakers with public commentary and personal reflection.
1919 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction
Spine number 26
Letters of Travel (1892–1913)
Journeys through North America, Japan, Canada and Egypt prompt observations about landscape, transport and the organisation of everyday life. Kipling’s curiosity is inseparable from the political assumptions he brings to the places he visits. The 1920 collection gathers earlier travel writing; the dates in its title describe the journeys rather than the book’s first publication.
1920 · collection · Non-fiction
Spine number 27
The Irish Guards in the Great War
Kipling follows the Irish Guards through the First World War, recording operations alongside the demands of ordinary regimental life. Based on military records and accounts from participants, the history brings his attention to work and comradeship to a factual narrative. Published in two volumes in 1923, it concerns the regiment in which his son John served and died.
1923 · book · Non-fiction
Spine number 28
Debits and Credits
Shared rituals, reading and acts of care offer uncertain shelter to people carrying private burdens. The Janeites brings Jane Austen into soldiers’ conversation, while The Gardener approaches bereavement through a journey to a war cemetery. This 1926 collection places stories of loss and endurance beside school comedy and historical fiction.
1926 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 29
A Book of Words
Speaking to students, doctors, writers and civic audiences, Kipling discusses the responsibilities attached to work and public life. The speeches show how he adapted his language to an occasion while returning to service, education and empire. The original 1928 collection brought together addresses delivered over many years; later editions added further speeches.
1928 · collection · Non-fiction
Spine number 30
Thy Servant a Dog
Boots the dog tries to make sense of human habits through the urgent concerns of walks, food, friendship and belonging. His restricted vocabulary lets readers understand things that the narrator cannot, creating both comedy and pathos. This entry covers the three-story volume published in 1930, before later expanded collections of Kipling’s dog stories.
1930 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 31
Limits and Renewals
Illness, damaged lives and difficult acts of care recur in stories that move between modern settings and the distant past. Doctors, scholars and sailors confront what they can repair and what remains beyond their knowledge. Published in 1932, this final collection of new stories includes Dayspring Mishandled, Unprofessional and The Tender Achilles.
1932 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 32
Something of Myself
Kipling looks back on childhood, newspaper work, travel and the making of his books, offering a selective account of how he became a writer. The memoir is often most revealing when it describes the practical habits of composition. Written in 1935 and left unfinished, it was prepared for publication by his wife Caroline and appeared posthumously in 1937.
1937 · book · Non-fiction · Unfinished · Posthumous
These four routes offer different ways into Kipling: animal fables, playful tales for reading aloud, a journey across India and the more demanding short fiction of his later years.
Where to begin
Start here
The Jungle Book
Begin with the varied stories around Mowgli to encounter Kipling’s interest in belonging, rules and the price of independence. Read the poems between the tales too: their changes of voice help make this a collection of different worlds rather than a single continuous adventure.
Not yet in our collection
For shorter reading sessions
Just So Stories
Choose these tales for their verbal play and the pleasure of a voice telling a story directly to you. Reading aloud brings out the repetitions and rhythms; the illustrations and their captions add another layer of jokes.
Not yet in our collection
For a sustained novel
Kim
Try this if you prefer to stay with a small group of characters over a long journey. Let the unfamiliar vocabulary and encounters accumulate gradually, and attend to the tension between Kim’s affection for the lama and the uses an imperial intelligence service finds for his talents.
Not yet in our collection
Read next
Debits and Credits
Move to this collection for stories in which grief and comradeship often emerge indirectly, through conversations and small acts. It rewards slower reading: what a speaker leaves unsaid can matter as much as the events described.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1886
Departmental Ditties and Other Verses
collection
Office rivalries, courtship and the social codes of British India become subjects for brisk, often satirical verse. The volume combines invented characters and situations with reflective poems; first published in 1886, it grew through several expanded editions.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1888
Plain Tales from the Hills
collection
Officials, soldiers and families negotiate the pleasures and injuries of life in colonial India, where a rumour or a careless promise can alter a reputation. These compact stories move quickly from social comedy to cruelty and loss. The 1888 collection gathered much of Kipling’s early newspaper fiction.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1890
Soldiers Three and Other Stories
collection
The soldiers Mulvaney, Learoyd and Ortheris tell stories of barrack life, friendship and violence, alongside scenes of marriage and Indian life beyond the regiment. This entry represents the expanded 1890 volume, bringing together Soldiers Three, The Story of the Gadsbys and In Black and White, originally issued separately in 1888–1889.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1890
Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories
collection
Children cross boundaries they scarcely understand, adults hide their motives, and apparently secure lives are disturbed by fear or ambition. This 1890 collected volume brings together Under the Deodars, The Phantom Rickshaw and Wee Willie Winkie, first issued separately in 1889. Its stories include The Man Who Would Be King and Baa Baa, Black Sheep.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1891
Life’s Handicap
collection
Soldiers’ recollections, private households and encounters with the uncanny expose lives that public conventions cannot fully explain. Without Benefit of Clergy centres on an Englishman’s hidden domestic life with Ameera, while other tales move into barrack humour and horror. The 1891 volume brings together stories previously scattered across periodicals and earlier collections.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1891
The Light That Failed
book
War artist Dick Heldar tries to reconcile professional success with his attachment to Maisie, an artist determined to pursue her own work. Their conflicting ambitions unfold in a novel about seeing, possession and the costs of artistic commitment. The full 1891 book differs from the shorter magazine version, which had another ending.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1892
Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses
collection
Marching rhythms and colloquial speakers bring soldiers’ complaints, loyalties and memories into verse. Poems including Tommy, Gunga Din and Mandalay sit beside ballads and wider reflections on human conduct. Published in 1892, the volume combines imagined voices and narratives with public and reflective poetry.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1892
The Naulahka: A Story of West and East
book · Collaboration
American entrepreneur Nick Tarvin travels to India with an eye on a valuable necklace and the future of his Colorado town, while Kate Sheriff hopes to provide medical help to women. Their purposes meet court politics in an adventure shaped by American ambition and colonial assumptions. This entry covers the whole novel jointly written with Wolcott Balestier, issued in book form in 1892 after serialisation began in 1891.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1893
Many Inventions
collection
Soldiers, sailors and Londoners find themselves in stories where ordinary experience can turn towards fantasy or the inexplicable. The collection includes In the Rukh, Mowgli’s first appearance in print, and The Finest Story in the World, about a young man with extraordinary memories. Published in 1893, it gathers work written after Kipling left India.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1894
The Jungle Book
collection
Mowgli grows up among wolves, learning the laws and loyalties of the jungle while facing the tiger Shere Khan. Other stories follow a mongoose, a white seal and an elephant-handler’s son, giving the collection a wider cast than Mowgli alone. First collected in 1894, the tales are accompanied by poems.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1895
The Second Jungle Book
collection
Mowgli’s place among animals and people becomes more difficult as he grows older and meets new threats. Stories set beyond his jungle include a journey through an Arctic landscape and an Indian holy man’s encounter with danger. This second collection appeared in 1895, extending the first book’s linked tales and verse.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1896
The Seven Seas
collection
Sailors, engineers and soldiers speak across a collection preoccupied with work, movement and Britain’s imperial connections. McAndrew’s Hymn gives a ship’s engineer a long, argumentative voice, while other poems take the form of songs and ballads. Published in 1896, the book combines fictional speakers with political and reflective verse.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1897
Captains Courageous
book
Rescued after falling from an ocean liner, wealthy teenager Harvey Cheyne must earn his place aboard a fishing schooner on the Grand Banks. The unfamiliar routines of the crew give this coming-of-age adventure its language, pace and practical detail. Serialised in 1896–1897, the novel appeared as a book in 1897.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1898
The Day’s Work
collection
Bridge-builders, seafarers and workers face demands that test both their skill and their loyalties. Ships, horses and a locomotive also acquire voices, extending the question of how individuals learn to work together. Collected in 1898, these stories range across India, America, England and the sea.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1899
From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches
collection
Kipling observes cities, transport, work and travel with a reporter’s appetite for detail and a traveller’s readiness to judge. This two-volume collection includes journeys through India, East Asia and America alongside the fictional sketches of The Smith Administration, giving it a mixed classification. First collected in this form in 1899, the material largely comes from his earlier journalism.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1899
Stalky & Co.
collection
Stalky, McTurk and Beetle turn boarding-school life into a contest of tactics, alliances and carefully planned retaliation. The linked stories bring a sharp edge to school comedy, questioning the adults’ accounts of discipline and fair play. This entry represents the nine-story collection of 1899; additional stories were gathered in The Complete Stalky & Co. in 1929.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1901
Kim
book
Kimball O’Hara, an Irish orphan brought up in India, joins a Tibetan lama’s spiritual search while becoming entangled in British intelligence work. Their journey moves through crowded roads, railway carriages and changing social worlds, making identity a matter of language, loyalty and performance. The book appeared in 1901 after magazine serialisation began in 1900.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1902
Just So Stories
collection
An inquisitive elephant, an independent cat and other creatures inhabit playful explanations of how the world acquired its familiar features. Repetition, invented language and a narrator who addresses the listener make the stories especially suited to reading aloud. The 1902 collection includes Kipling’s own illustrations as well as accompanying poems.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1903
The Five Nations
collection
Public declarations about empire sit beside soldiers’ voices shaped by the South African War. The collection includes Recessional, with its anxiety about national pride, and poems concerned with service, responsibility and defeat. Published in 1903, it combines dramatic invention with political argument and reflection.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1904
Traffics and Discoveries
collection
Motor travel, wireless experiments and military routines open into stories of incomplete knowledge and unexpected encounters. Comedy shares space with bereavement and the uncanny, particularly in They and Mrs Bathurst. The 1904 collection asks readers to piece together motives and events from what its speakers reveal or withhold.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1906
Puck of Pook’s Hill
collection
Two children in Sussex meet Puck, who brings figures from the past to tell their stories. Roman service, Norman settlement and medieval bargaining make history something encountered in the fields and paths around home. Published in 1906, the linked tales alternate with poems and treat the past through imaginative storytelling.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1909
Actions and Reactions
collection
An American couple settling in Sussex, an unhappy household and the crew of a future airship inhabit a collection of sharply different worlds. The stories explore how communities work, what binds people to a place and what happens when a system is disturbed. First collected in 1909, the volume includes With the Night Mail, Kipling’s speculative account of aerial transport.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1910
Rewards and Fairies
collection
Dan and Una again meet people from the past through Puck, hearing stories of craft, leadership and decisions made under pressure. The tales and their accompanying poems often approach the same questions from different angles. Published in 1910 as a companion to Puck of Pook’s Hill, the volume includes the poem If—.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1917
A Diversity of Creatures
collection
A future society governed from the air, a village caught in a publicity campaign and households touched by war appear in this varied collection. Practical jokes and speculative inventions give way to the disturbing pressures of hatred and loss. Published in 1917, it includes As Easy as A.B.C., The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat and Mary Postgate.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1919
The Years Between
collection
Political argument, wartime anger and the remembrance of the dead run through poems written across the years before and during the First World War. Short epitaphs place individual voices beside declarations about nations and duty. Collected in 1919, the volume combines imagined speakers with public commentary and personal reflection.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1920
Letters of Travel (1892–1913)
collection
Journeys through North America, Japan, Canada and Egypt prompt observations about landscape, transport and the organisation of everyday life. Kipling’s curiosity is inseparable from the political assumptions he brings to the places he visits. The 1920 collection gathers earlier travel writing; the dates in its title describe the journeys rather than the book’s first publication.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1923
The Irish Guards in the Great War
book
Kipling follows the Irish Guards through the First World War, recording operations alongside the demands of ordinary regimental life. Based on military records and accounts from participants, the history brings his attention to work and comradeship to a factual narrative. Published in two volumes in 1923, it concerns the regiment in which his son John served and died.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1926
Debits and Credits
collection
Shared rituals, reading and acts of care offer uncertain shelter to people carrying private burdens. The Janeites brings Jane Austen into soldiers’ conversation, while The Gardener approaches bereavement through a journey to a war cemetery. This 1926 collection places stories of loss and endurance beside school comedy and historical fiction.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1928
A Book of Words
collection
Speaking to students, doctors, writers and civic audiences, Kipling discusses the responsibilities attached to work and public life. The speeches show how he adapted his language to an occasion while returning to service, education and empire. The original 1928 collection brought together addresses delivered over many years; later editions added further speeches.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1930
Thy Servant a Dog
collection
Boots the dog tries to make sense of human habits through the urgent concerns of walks, food, friendship and belonging. His restricted vocabulary lets readers understand things that the narrator cannot, creating both comedy and pathos. This entry covers the three-story volume published in 1930, before later expanded collections of Kipling’s dog stories.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1932
Limits and Renewals
collection
Illness, damaged lives and difficult acts of care recur in stories that move between modern settings and the distant past. Doctors, scholars and sailors confront what they can repair and what remains beyond their knowledge. Published in 1932, this final collection of new stories includes Dayspring Mishandled, Unprofessional and The Tender Achilles.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1937
Something of Myself
book · Unfinished · Posthumous
Kipling looks back on childhood, newspaper work, travel and the making of his books, offering a selective account of how he became a writer. The memoir is often most revealing when it describes the practical habits of composition. Written in 1935 and left unfinished, it was prepared for publication by his wife Caroline and appeared posthumously in 1937.
Not yet in our collection
Rudyard Kipling was a British short-story writer, novelist and poet whose work moves between colonial India, the English countryside and imagined animal worlds. His stories often turn on belonging, practical knowledge and the obligations of a group, with voices ranging from conversational comedy to compressed, unsettling accounts of grief. The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901) and Just So Stories (1902) show different sides of that range.
Born in Bombay, now Mumbai, on 30 December 1865, Kipling was educated in England before returning to India in 1882 to work as a journalist. Newspaper work supplied material for his early stories and verse. After several years in Vermont, he settled in England; his later historical tales draw on the Sussex landscape. In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Kipling’s support for British imperial rule, and the racial hierarchies expressed in parts of his writing, remain central to critical discussion of his work. The death of his son John in the First World War was followed by writing concerned with loss, remembrance and recovery. He died in London on 18 January 1936. His unfinished memoir, Something of Myself, appeared the following year.