VICTORIAN KIPLING: PROBLEMS OF BIOGRAPHY

John Batchelor

Abstract


Kipling is an enigma, a writer who moved with such speed and such instant responsiveness to immediate circumstance that a central identity, or core, for this figure remains elusive. All biographies of Kipling struggle with his multiple identities. Born in India, the son of an art teacher descended from Yorkshire Methodists, he also had close links to the Pre-Raphaelites (through his uncle Edward Burne-Jones). He was feted in literary London (from 1890) for short stories and demotic verse which were seen as daring, masculine, fresh and exotic. His celebration of Victoria’s empire made him an unofficial laureate, the most widely read Victorian poet to follow Tennyson’s death in 1892.

The abruptness of his decisions and transitions (sudden marriage, precipitous retreat from his home in Vermont, irrational quarrels and violent outbursts with political opponents) argue an unstable temperament. His well-documented bullying at the hands of a guardian between the ages of 5 and 11 had probably destabilized him for life. This essay explores how a quest for self-knowledge and a chameleon evasiveness characterize much of his personal history and porposes that Kim is both the greatest full-length achievement of his career and the work in which his personal conflicts appear temporarily resolved. 


Keywords


Rudyard Kipling; english poetry; Victorian Literature; Kim

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