Thomas Pinney, an emeritus professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California and an American scholar, recently discovered several lost poems by the late British writer Rudyard Kipling.
Finally published together with more than 1,000 other poems in the three volumes of the Cambridge edition of Rudyard Kipling a few weeks ago, this is Kipling's The first complete version ever of Lin's poetry collection.
Pinney discovered that dozens of previously unpublished poems were widely circulated in different places. Some were reportedly hidden among family documents, while others were discovered during renovations on a house in New York. Others were discovered in the archives of former Cunard Line leaders.
The manuscript did circulate. But so was Kipling, born in Bombay (then Bombay), the son of British subjects who lived and worked in British India. He was sent to school in England at the age of five and, as was customary, spent the rest of his childhood with a boarding family in Portsmouth.
Kipling returned to British India as a teenager and wrote for an English newspaper. He then traveled extensively to what is now Burma, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, and then began touring the United States and Canada, writing about his travels and shaking hands with the likes of Mark Twain. After arriving on the East Coast, Kipling crossed the Atlantic and settled briefly in London before detouring back to New England to live in the United States for a few more years. He and his family eventually returned to Old England, living in Devon and eventually East Sussex.
Kipling, of course, is the best-known author of The Jungle Book and The Manderly and If poems. The latter is often voted Britain's most popular poem by the public, and is considered by many to be a particularly adept expression of Britain's signature "stiff-upper-lip" Stoicism. More or less, this is a poster to keep calm and spread the word in poetry.
Speaking of wartime propaganda, some of the newly discovered poetry dates back to the First World War. Initially known as a staunch supporter of Britain's involvement in the conflict, Kipling backed his enthusiasm by helping his young son John gain a commission in the Irish Guards, despite the boy being repeatedly deemed unwell.
, but after John died at the Battle of Loos in 1915 (aged 18), Kipling deeply regretted his earlier enthusiasm. These new poems will help to further illuminate the evolution of Kipling's views after his son's death - an evolution that culminated in the writing of his "War Epitaph": "If there is any question why we died/ Tell them because our fathers lied
This sentiment is likely to cause an outcry among today's war-weary Americans and Britons, even though we are no longer close to Kipling and Kipling. The regrets experienced by his contemporaries were nearly a century apart
Another newly discovered poem, entitled "The Press," is also a testament to Kipling's surprising relevance.
It’s a scathing indictment of media ethics and tabloid journalism that could easily be as simple in 2009 as it was in 1899. The Guardian published the article in full here, and The Guardian shared the article: