Rudyard Kipling: A Readers' Guide

129 The difference in attitude toward Kipling since, say, about 1940 is nicely illustrated if one compares the relatively harsh language of Orwell with the more moderate phrasing of George Shepperson; both writers recognize the unpleasant implications of what Kipling sometimes says and both recognize the qualities that have been the cause of Kipling's survival as one of the foremost writers of his time. Alan Sandison, in showing that even in his earlier stories Kipling "is never simply political," also contributes to the new image we are getting of Kipling. Nor are these new approaches to Kipling merely a matter of whitewashing the popular or unpopular older image. Critics are rather discovering greater complexity, more varied facets, more of the submerged iceberg to describe Kipling's total work and personality. The present volume, in encouraging a serious examination of Kipling's work, is admirable. The articles by Louis Cornell and Elliott Gilbert we published in ELT, VII: 4 (1964) indicate some directions future discussions of Kipling might take. Purdue University H. E. Gerber 2. Rudyard Kipling: A Readers' Guide A READERS' GUIDE TO THE WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING. Section II, Pp. 637 to 1141 inclusive. Edited and Collected by R. E. Harbord. Printed privately in a Limited Edition of 100 Copies by Messrs. Gibbs & Sons Ltd., of Canterbury, Kent, England, 1963. $15. This is the second part of the projected six sections of this extremely useful compilation of notes on Kipling's works. For details on the origin and development of this project, the reader should consult the note in EFT, III: 5 (I960), 171, and the review of the first section in EFT, V: 5 (1962), 43. Apart from useful but still minor notes on the Crofts Collection, the Garth Album, and the Denham letter; the somewhat more important notes on the United Services College Chronicle, on THE SCRIBBLER, on QUARTETTE and TURNOVERS; the most important material in this section are the notes on ABAFT THE FUNNEL, FROM SEA TO SEA, LIFE'S HANDICAP, A FLEET IN BEING, and the notes on Uncollected Prose. The page and line references are again to the Macmillan Uniform and Pocket Editions, but the volume in Scribners' (OUTWARD BOUND) and the Sussex and Burwash Editions is also noted. The editors again promise, in time, a thorough index and, in addition, two volumes of READERS1 GUIDES to Kipling's verse. We commend the editors for producing this time a volume freer of typographical errors than the first one was and for once more producing a research tool on Kipling that will have permanent value and that should help to make more careful critical studies of Kipling's work possible. Purdue University H. E. Gerber 3- John Addington Symonds: The Public and the Private Life Phyllis Grosskurth. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. Lond: Longmans, 1964. 45s. Judgments on Symonds as a man, a poet, a critic, a biographer and an art historian vary widely in the relatively few places where he is even given extended treatment. The most recent opinion by reputable scholars, Robert Peters in his "Athens and Troy: Notes on John Addington Symonds' Aesthetlcism," EFT, V: 5 (1962), 14-26, ...