Rudyard Kipling and the Norman ( Conquest)

Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, Vol.39, No. 3 (2008)

Introduction: In his introduction to A Choice of Kipling’s Verse, T. S. Eliot describes Rudyard Kipling’s positive attitude towards British imperialism:

He believed the British Empire to be a good thing [...] he wished to set before his readers an idea of what it should be [...] He believed that the British have a greater aptitude for ruling than other people, and that they include a greater number of kindly, incorruptible and un-self-seeking men capable of administration.

In his day, Kipling’s work won the Nobel Prize and earned him a place in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. Yet his support for imperialism makes him unpopular with readers today. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, for example, decries his regard for “the conquest of India [...] as a historically appropriate event”. Kipling, however, was neither blind nor insensitive to the horrors of the British presence in India. George Orwell, who calls him a “jingo-imperialist”, and describes his work as “morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting,” nevertheless concedes “few people who have criticized England from the inside have said bitterer things about her than this gutter patriot”. For example, Kipling’s famous poem, “ The White Man’s Burden”, coins the phrase that to this day codifies a colonial mentality. At the same time, however, his famous lines, “the blame of those ye better,/ the hate of those ye guard”, can be taken as an implicit critique of colonialism, as the poem articulates a cankered, cranky perspective on the now-proverbial “silent, sullen” natives, “halfdevil and half-child.” Representing the view of someone who would consider insurgency a form of ingratitude, and revealing this view unvarnished, in the manner of Robert Browning, Kipling leaves the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

Kipling’s treatment of the Norman Conquest, a subject to which he returns throughout his career, reveals the hidden depths of anxiety and irony in his attitude to empire. Th e Norman Conquest provided England with a model of cultural imperialism.
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Rudyard Kipling and the Norman ( Conquest)

Robert Louis Stevenson Biography, Google celebrate the 160th birthday

Robert Louis Stevenson was one of the most-read adventure novelists of the late 1800s. Among his most popular books were Kidnapped (1886), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and Treasure Island (1883). The latter book features Stevenson’s famous crafty pirate Long John Silver. Stevenson also published a much-loved book of poems, A Child’s Garden of Verse (1885).

Today, Google is celebrating the 160th birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson with a special drawing for Oceania. Robert Louis Stevenson spent many years traveling in search of a climate that would suit his illness. He suffered from tuberculosis for much of his life. He finally settled in Samoa, where he died in 1894 and is buried.

Meanwhile, the California-based company has a tradition of holding special events by drawing doodles detailing the letters of his name. More than 700 have been designed at the international level. The drawing contains new pictures of Stevenson famous novel, Treasure Island. Yet, the book that some believe would have been Robert Louis Stevenson’s best, Weir of Hermiston, was left unfinished at his
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Robert Louis Stevenson Biography, Google celebrate the 160th birthday

Literary pilgrimage: How I discovered Mark Twain

ELMIRA, N.Y. — "MARK TWAIN NEXT RIGHT'' read the sign by the cemetery gates, as if a grave could be a street address. Obediently, I made the turn and drove along a narrow lane shaded by brilliant yellow maples and dark-green fir trees, wondering how I'd recognize the famous resting place.

A granite steamboat, perhaps, to recall the author's early days on the Mississippi? A statue of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, his most famous characters? Or maybe a bust of himself, with his big mustache and thick curly hair frozen in bronze?

I found nothing like that — only dignity and calm.





America's most American writer lies in a family plot on a gentle hillside, beside his beloved wife, Livy, surrounded by the graves of their children and her relatives — all under simple, matching headstones.

The name on his marker is the one he was born with, Samuel L. Clemens. The pen name we know him by — which he once claimed to detest — gets second-billing below.

For me, these quiet graves were the end of a quest I hadn't planned on making. I'd always been a Hemingway fan, with runner-up passions for Robert Louis Stevenson and the Bronte sisters.

But this year — the 100th anniversary of his death — I've been immersed in Mark Twain. I've been reading almost nothing but his abundant travel writing, with side trips into biographies about him, when I needed a break.

It has felt like living with the man, and his writing is so prolific and varied — and his life so preposterously colorful — that I now wonder how I could have cared about anyone else.

I like literary pilgrimages in general, so I'd already visited his preserved homes:

The little frame house in the Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Missouri, where he spent his boyhood.

The fantastical mansion he built for his family in Hartford, Conn., when Mark Twain's books had made Sam Clemens rich.

And, this October, Quarry Farm, his sister-in-law's country home on a hill overlooking Elmira, south of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York's softly rolling hills.

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Literary pilgrimage: How I discovered Mark Twain

The Last of the Hardy Players – Review

Novelist Thomas Hardy in 1914. Photograph: E.O. Hoppe/CORBIS

What a delight The Last of the Hardy Players (Radio 4) turned out to be. Julian Fellowes went to Dorchester to interview Norrie Woodhall, a sharp 104-year old who knew Thomas Hardy through his involvement with the local amateur-dramatics group.

Woodhall recalled rehearsals at Hardy's home, Max Gate, for a 1924 production of Tess. Hardy apologised that he hadn't written much for her to say. "Well," she said firmly, "he hadn't." She got the acting bug as she watched the players rehearse at the hotel her family ran: "I had a hole in one of the curtains, and I used to watch. I just longed to be in it myself." When the Players disbanded, she said: "Life was gone for me in Dorchester."

My favourite bit was when Woodhall remembered Florence Hardy, and didn't mince her words. "I took an instant dislike to her," she snapped. Florence had talked Woodhall's sister, Gertrude – an acclaimed actress – out of playing Tess in a London production. "[Florence] became insanely jealous," Woodhall explained. "And I do say insanely."

The programme also contained charming anecdotes about the challenges of performing Hardy's work on stage, then and now. We heard about a drunken sheep shearer who had to bring a flock on stage with him, and went rather off-script: "He kissed them and sang to them."
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The Last of the Hardy Players – Review