Early Stages

Abstract

Kipling’s stories began to appear in England from 1888, when a thousand copies of the volume Plain Tales from the Hills were sent there from Calcutta by Thacker, Spink & Co. It was at the beginning of 1890, shortly after Kipling’s own arrival, that his name really became known with the publication of Soldiers Three for the English market. The earliest stories in these volumes date back as far as 1884. In this chapter the early stages of Kipling’s development as a writer of fiction are described. In the context of the British view of India outlined in Chapter 1 it is possible to see how Kipling’s own approach to India assisted the transformation from Anglo-Indian journalist to the author who took London by storm in 1890.