Rudyard Kipling: Life, Love, and Art

This is William Dillingham’s third book studying the relationship between Rudyard Kipling’s inner life and his writings. The focus is on major short stories, mainly from Kipling’s later period, beginning with an earlier work, “‘The Finest Story in the World,’” and concluding with the last story he wrote, “‘Teem’—a Treasure Hunter.” Rudyard Kipling: Life, Love, and Art analyzes stories that are not only among Kipling’s most accomplished but also demonstrably in need of a fresh, thorough reassessment, furnishing insights into how such intricately complex works as “‘Wireless,’” “Mrs. Bathurst,” “The Bull That Thought,” and “The Wish House” were conceived and how they reflect Kipling’s most cherished beliefs, including his commitments and his fears. As Professor Dillingham says, “we find that frequently at their core are matters that deal with the heart of his craft and subjects that pervade his writings: life, how it should and should not be lived; love, what is healthy about it and what is perilous; and Art, what it is in broad terms ‘proper work’ and how crucially important it is to one’s sense of identity.”