Customer Reviews

The Complete Stalky and Co. (Oxford World's Classics)

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This is one of the few books I chose to take with me when I left the country for a two year stint at teaching English in Japan. It is the same book as "Stalky & Co." except it includes five stories and four poems that are not to be found in the other version. It is Kipling's amazing talent for re-creating the spoken dialect of a people that makes this book such a tour-de-force. In "The Complete Stalky & Co.," he aimes that ear at the 19th century British schoolboy, and re-creates for us the long-vanished world responsible for the formation of the men that populate his other novels - the British private school.

The story is of three young friends at war with their teachers, a conflict which is kept in check only by the wisdom and experience of the headmaster. Although the stories are for the most part humorous, they clearly show Kipling's perspective on the maxim of 'as the twig is bent, so goes the tree, and as the novel is partly autobiographical it is interesting as an insight into Kipling's development as well as a story in its own right.
Although "The Complete Stalky & Co." is considered by many to be a book for children, the plotting, dialect work, and occasional adult references set it apart as a rare story that may be about children but perhaps is not intended for children.

With Stalky, McTurk and Beetle around, you know that school will never be boring. They are a terror to the house-masters, the prefects, and just about everyone else. And, college complete, out they go, bursting upon an unsuspecting world!

I must admit that I have not read much Rudyard Kipling, but this is one of my favorite books! Kipling takes an irreverent look at late-nineteenth century British school life, taking the reader along on a hilarious journey from one adventure to another. As this book was originally written with the younger reader in mind, they will no doubt enjoy seeing these students outmaneuver and overwhelm their elders. But, even if you are only young at heart, you will still enjoy this wonderfully hilarious book. I have read it three times over the years, and do not hesitate to recommend it highly to everyone!

Well, get ready to take yourself back to grammar and high school! If you attended a small, interactive private (in the US sense) school, this incredibly imaginative coverage of the genre will leave you gasping for breath more than once. If you, in your youth, were adventurous, mischievous and inventive, always in some sort of trouble, this is a book that will recapture those times both when you beat the system and when the system beat you. My father, who would be 103 if he still lived, passed this book on to me in his will, and I still have the original. In its thirty years of existence it's become dogeared and yellowed, like its former and its current owner. And it cost $.60 originally. You don't have to be old to enjoy it; you don't even have to have a "past" to laugh out loud every single time you read it. Buy it! You'll be passing it on to your children.

Then this book is for you. This coming-of-age story relates the adventures of three mischievous boys at an English public school. Each chapter describes one of their pranks, which are ingenious and hysterical. They are pursued by the faculty with little success, but when caught they are creatively punished by the wise Headmaster. Without appearing to do so, Kipling paints a vivid and intimate portait of these pranksters. This book is founded on Kipling's memories of his boyhood friends, and by the last chapter they will be your friends too. I read this book about once a year, and enjoy it more each time.

This is an abysmal recording of Stalky and Co. Read by some vapid, arch young woman who doesn't get sarcasm or irony. In that marvelous scene early on in which M'Turk sees the keeper poaching a vixen in cubbing season, goes all feudal and Irish, and confronts the landowner, the silly besom reads it as if it's Eeyore confronting Piglet. That scene was funny to me when I was 7 and I didn't even understand most of it. And she's American. I am actually going to trash the tape to the publisher. Regardless of non PC stuff, I love Kipling, especially Stalky, Kim, and Puck. Every summer holidays since I was quite young, I began ceremoniously by reading Stalky , Kim, and The Sword in the Stone. A great story, ruined by a reader who does not understand it. Soporific.

This is my absolute favorite book of all time. Not only is the story brilliant - Stalky & Co. repeatedly outwitting their elders and peers in creative and innovative ways - but the language is pure gold. The book is chocked full of delightful gems of British schoolboy slang, from giglamps to fags to brollies - and the teachers' vocabulary is spectacular. Say what you like about Kipling, but this book is magnificent.

When I was young I had a serious Kipling period, but not so serious that I bought all his stuff. To get all the Stalky stories you had to buy various books that I did not want to buy and keep. Or so I thought. In The Complete Stalky you get all the stories in one volume.
The present day young probably won't like the book much for it describes something that is mostly history, but I am old enough to have seen a very authoritarian school system and when I read the book the first time I recognised all the teachers.

Stalky and Co is the story of three boys in a private British school, which is a lot like saying that The Lord of the Rings is about four Hobbits who go out walking. I've lost count of the number of times I've read this hilarious, madcap, brilliant book, and this would easily make my Desert Island Top 10 list without a moments' hesitation.

One of the three boys, Beetle, is actually Kipling himself, writing in the same autobiographical manner he adopted for the excellent short story, Baa Baa Black Sheep. He and his cohorts, Stalky and the inscrutable McTurk, wage an ongoing battle against what they perceive to be the hypocrisy and cant of their headmasters. This battle is waged with a fiendish sense of irony and fair play, and great pains are taken that the punishments should be tailor-made to fit the crimes. The language and slang are a delight in themselves, and incorporating the better phrases into your own speech is a nearly irresistable temptation. I don't enjoy everything Kipling wrote, but this sadly forgotten book would be enough to win me over as a fan even if he was the worst writer in history.

I first read Stalky and Co many years ago when I was at Boarding School and it became one of my favorite books. When I discovered recently there was a Complete Stalky and Co. with five more stories I purchased it immediately. It is still one of my favorite books and I thoroughly enjoyed the five new tales. I just wish so much that Rudyard Kipling was still alive so I could ask him, well, what happened next?

This is one of the most enjoyable books that I have ever read. I have to order a new copy because the old one is falling apart from overuse. The book has been read by every member of the family, from my grandfather to nieces and nephews.