Mulvaney Stories (Short Story Index Reprint Series) [Hardcover]

Rudyard Kipling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1997 | ISBN-10: 0836940458 | ISBN-13: 978-0836940459

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was not yet 25 when he burst onto the literary scene in London, where his stories of Anglo-Indian life made him an instant celebrity. He won the Nobel Prize in 1907. Born in India in 1865 to an upper-class military family, he spent his early years in Britain and India and achieved his initial success as a reporter in India. He traveled widely and visited the U.S. a number of times, eventually building a house in Vermont. A restless wanderer, he ultimately settled in Sussex, only to have his world tumble into ruins with the death of his son in World War I.

Kipling is revered for his adult and children's stories and poems, but much of his life and writings is largely unknown in the United States. (Because he believed, and wrote, that Americans were ignorant provincials, his political views were not appreciated in the states.) Witty, profound, wildly funny, acerbic and occasionally savage, Rudyard Kipling's writings continue to delight readers of all ages. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 230 pages
• Publisher: Ayer Co Pub (June 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0836940458
• ISBN-13: 978-0836940459
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,577,051 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Three British Army Privates Speak Three Kinds of English in Queen Victoria's India, May 19, 2011

By 

T. Patrick Killough "All about Patrick" (Black Mountain, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mulvaney Stories (Paperback)

In 1897 31-year old Rudyard Kipling published a small collection of 12 short stories that he had been writing off and on since 1887 about three privates in an all-white British army regiment in India. The "Three Musketeers" as Kipling called them in the first of 18 yarns that immortalized their low-class adventures, spoke three different versions of the same British English language. Kipling gives lengthy, accurate samples of Private Learoyd's Yorkshire, Private Ortheris's Cockney and Private (once long ago Corporal) Mulvaney's Irish.

For extended exposure to a dialect of North England, dip into "Private Learoyd's Story." Herein the three friends cooperated to separate Mrs. De Sussa, a wealthy Eurasian, from 350 rupees. She coveted the "colonel's lady's dog Rip .. t' prettiest picter of a cliver fox-tarrier 'at iver I set eyes on." The three friends, led by taxidermist Ortheris, eventually painted a bad-tempered Rip look-alike to pass for the terrier and sold him temporarily cowed inside a covered basket to Mrs. De Sussa as she boarded a train at Howrah for Monsooree Pahar.

And how did Mrs. De Sussa look to six foot six Private Learoyd? "Ortheris ... said she wasn't a real laady, but nobbut a Hewrasian. I don't gainsay as her culler was a bit doosky like. But she was a laady. Why she rode iv a cariage, an' good 'osses too, an her 'air was that oiled as you cud see your faice in it." At the train station in Howrah, the soldiers three " 'elped Mrs. De Sussa wi' about sixty boxes, an' then we gave her t'basket. ... 'Oh!' says t'awd lass; the beautee! How sweet he looks!' An' just then t' beauty snarled and showed his teeth, so Mulvaney shuts down t' lid..."

Most of Mrs. De Sussa's 350 rupees went to wet three thirsty military throats. Except for a bit of which Mulvaney said, "I'll send a thrifle to Father Victor for the poor people he's always beggin' for."

One after another the 12 MULVANEY STORIES showcase Privates Mulvaney, Learoyd and Ortheris at work and at play. Their regiment fights in India, in Afghanistan and in Burma. When not fighting they turn the visit of a visiting Lord who wants the regiment to do an extra parade into an occasion for making him think he is being kidnapped by dacoits. Mulvaney becomes engaged to Dinah Shadd, a sergeant's daughter, but their marriage almost did not happen when then Corporal Mulvaney's eye kept roving a tad too long among the ladies. In one tale, Mulvaney takes a gorgeous but old royal Indian palanquin away from an Irish railroad foreman who has been cheating his gullible "naygurs" out of their wages. Bent on revenge, the foreman drugs Mulvaney and puts him and palanquin on a train for the holy city of Benares. In a Hindu temple, Mulvaney's quick thinking gets him taken for the god Krishna by dozens of Indian princesses there to pray to give birth to sons. And on and on the stories go rollicking along.

This is the life of ordinary soldier Tommy Atkins, British equivalent of G.I. Joe. The three friends are not the stuff of which field-marshals are made. And Kipling was the first British writer to do them justice.

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