Rajasthan: Nineteen Letters of Marque, 1887-89

Kipling left the ‘strong light and darkness of India’ aged just five, but fortunately for his future readers, returned home aged sixteen in 1882. ‘I found myself at Bombay where I was born, moving among sights and smells that made me deliver in the vernacular sentences whose meaning I knew not.’ He was immediately put to work, writing for such local newspapers as the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore and the Pioneer in Allahabad. The former appeared six days a week and would be remembered by Kipling as my ‘mistress and most true love.’ Although he was worked hard as a journalist, Kipling's need to write was unstoppable, and he published his first collection of verse as well as creating his celebrated short-story collections.  After five years of almost demonic literary energy he wrote nineteen extraordinarily vivid travel essays as he explored the independent Kingdoms of Rajasthan, first published in 1887.

We found that wherever we travelled, these travel essays were quoted and referred to with affection and zeal throughout Rajasthan, whatever people thought of his politics.  They stand completely apart and ever fresh, the work of a young man intoxicated by India.  They have never been published in a single volume before this Eland edition.

‘An immense gift for using words, an amazing curiosity and power of observations with his mind and all his senses.’ T S Eliot