Kipling in the Libraries

KIPLING IN THE LIBRARIES By Thomas Pinney (Pomona College) It has been said that the bibliography of Kiphng presents the thickest jungle in all of modem Enghsh hterature: the profusion of his writings m the multiphcity of their printings, editions, piracies, coUections, and adaptations has yet to be fuUy sorted out, though many have ventured, and ventured worthüy, on the task over the last ninety years. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that there is a comparable sort of abundance and confusion in the prospect revealed by a survey of Kiphng coUections in libraries. Kiphng of course produced a lot or work in many forms;1 he was very famous very young; his career coincided with the fashion for literary coUecting among the wealthy and not-so-wealthy; and that career was, after aU, reaUy quite recent as literary history goes. The predictable result of these conditions is that much, very much, by and about Kipling has been coUected and organized in widely-scattered libraries and private coUections. I exclude private collections from this enumeration, and there are no doubt many interesting and useful collections in pubhc institutions that I have missed or have judged not quite important enough for special notice. The notes that foUow must therefore be understood as preliminary and incomplete, not as a comprehensive guide to a clearly-defined subject. They suggest what the situation is like and wUl, perhaps, save some time for inquirers with particular questions. The scope and character of the different collections vary widely, and it is not easy to devise a scheme for describing them that wiU meet all requirements. It is convenient, if not wholly logical, to base the hst on locations rather than on the kinds of material contained in the different coUections— manuscripts, first editions, letters, coUected editions and the like—though I add at the end a special section on manuscripts. A word here on the variety of material that Kipling produced and that coUectors have coUected may be useful. The range of extant Kipling manuscripts includes those for most of the major pubhshed writings from the mid-90s on. It also includes much unpublished verse, some unpubhshed prose, and thousands of letters. In form it includes sketches and drafts of pubhshed and unpubhshed work, complete holographs, fair copies, and corrected typescripts, proofs, magazine pages, and printed volumes. The evidence that this body of material presents for the study of Kipling's methods of composition and for the evolution of his pubhshed texts is almost overwhelming, not the less so for having been, up to this moment, almost entirely unstudied. The abundance and variety of Kipling's pubhshed work now gathered in libraries is equaUy great. Kiphng's fame was world-wide, and it coincided with developments in the production and distribution of hterature that made it possible for his books to be manufactured in innumberable editions and forms for sale literaUy everywhere, in many languages. His was also the era of magazine publication for fiction and verse, of syndicated publication in newspapers, of adaptations for theaters, and, later, of film adaptation. A 83 given work by Kipling, then, may pass to the pubhc in a succession of forms, first as a syndicated newspaper item or as a magazine piece before appearing in book form; the book itself would then generate an indefinite number of forms: English trade edition, American trade edition, colonial edition, cheap edition, and so on. Even before the book form was achieved, the item would probably be brought out in a very limited special printing to make a "copyright edition' for the United States. Before the passage of an international copyright act by the United States in 1891, Kipling was fair game for the pirates. AU of his work produced before that date was abundantly pirated: the mass of unauthorized printings of Kipling forms a separate, large, and complex chapter of the Kipling bibliography, and collectors have frequently sought to add the unauthorized as well as the authorized items to their shelves. After newspaper, magazine, and book publication, the text would then pass into one of the numerous collected editions of Kipling, which go back to 1896 with the Outward Bound edition...