Kipling’s Philosophy of Education in Its Final Form

Abstract

Captains Courageous was published in 1896, two-thirds of the way through a decade in which Kipling’s literary apotheosis was swift and inexorable. His grip on the British reading public tightened steadily during this period, while men of letters on both sides of the Atlantic proclaimed his ascendancy. Henry James, who as Randall Jarrell remarks was capable of referring to Thomas Hardy as that “good little Thomas Hardy”, spoke of Kipling as “the most complete man of genius … that I have known”.¹ Conrad’s admiration was comparable and Stevenson labelled the enfant terrible as “the most promising young man who has appeared since — ahem — I appeared”.²