Something of Myself: For My Friends Known and Unknown (Penguin Twentieth-Century Clas) [Paperback]

Rudyard Kipling (Author), Robert Hampson (Editor), Richard Holmes (Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Twentieth-Century Clas | Publication Date: June 1999

Kipling's autobiography recalls his childhood in India, his schooldays and family life in the pre-Raphaelite circle that included William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones and his early writing career up to the award of the Nobel Prize (when he was only 42.)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was born in India but came to England as a child. He is perhaps best remembered for his children's books Just So Stories and The Jungle Book, and for his novel Kim.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin UK (June 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140185038
• ISBN-13: 978-0140185034
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,229,803 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "the lies I soon found it necessary to tell ... the foundation of literary effort", March 21, 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: Something of Myself: For My Friends Known and Unknown (Hardcover)

I have read and reread with great pleasure many a paragraph and sentence in Rudyard Kipling's 1937 autobiography, SOMETHING OF MYSELF FOR FRIENDS KNOWN AND UNKNOWN. Kipling was 69 when he began sketching highlights of his life and writing career. He recalls his birth in Bombay in 1865, a miserable six years with his even younger sister Trix in a boarding house in England while his parents went back to India and his more pleasant secondary boarding schooling at Devon's Westward Ho!. Kipling points to the rapid rise in his literary reputation during seven years as a very young journalist in India. Then follow his world travels, marriage, fatherhood, books like KIM, THE LIGHT THAT FAILED and THE JUNGLE BOOKS. His 1907 Nobel Prize for literature when he was 42 is a highlight. Much the rest of SOMETHING OF MYSELF details yearly travel between England and Capetown, South Africa during the Boer War years and the founding of Rhodesia and his friendships with men like Cecil Rhodes and H. Rider Haggard and others and, increasingly, the search for the perfect home in England. The book ends with a thorough review of the lessons that life had taught Rudyard Kipling about writing, especially how he in particular did his best work.

I find myself returning over and over to Chapter One: "A Very Young Person" and within that to Rudyard's earliest years when left by his parents alone with Trix in Lome Lodge, a very odd sort of boarding house. When "Ruddy" was five and Trix three, their parents, Johh Lockhart and Alice Kipling, came with them by ship from India and dropped them off without even saying goodbye. The place was Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. Brother and sister were placed in the care of Sea Captain and Mrs Holloway, who specialized in boarding children of British parents resident in India. The Holloways lived in "a new small house smelling of aridity and emptiness." The Captain was kind to Ruddy and took him on walks. "Then the old Captain died, and I was sorry, for he was the only person in that house as far as I can remember who ever threw me a kind word."

Ruddy and Trix had never heard of Hell before. But now they experienced it. "It was an establishment run with the full vigour of the Evangelical as revealed to the Woman." Mrs Holloway even made Ruddy go to and from the wretched local school bearing a sign proclaiming him "Liar." He was repeatedly beaten for lying by his hostess and her bully son seven years Kipling's senior. To Ruddy this was "the House of Desolation." Torture and cruelty were everyday expectations. Only when he learned to read, did Ruddy find a path to happiness. But soon his tormentress then took away his books, even those sent him from India by his parents.

Kipling also found that perfecting the lies necessary to survival made him pay close attention to the "calculated torture -- religious as well as scientific" that the Holloways imposed. Dissecting people for motives behind their evil would later help Kipling as a writer, through "the lies I soon found it necessary to tell ... the foundation of literary effort."

Only when his mother's wealthy sister on a visit discovered that Rudyard was virtually blind and had suffered a breakdown, did his mother rush back from India to rescue her children and eventually bring them back "home" to Lahore. His mother "told me afterwards that when she first came up to my room to kiss me good-night, I flung up an arm to guard off the cuff that I had been trained to expect."

Every chapter contains writing as good and as sometimes as poignant. See Rudyard being begged by his Capetown neighbor Cecil Rhodes for "the right words" to launch the Rhodes Scholarships. See Mrs Kipling feeding milk with a bottle for months on end to an orphaned lion cub on loan from Cecil Rhodes. Watch "the Father," John Lockhart Kipling, work closely with his gifted son to co-create KIM. It is all there. And all is written up as only Rudyard Kipling can write.

-OOO-

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Something of Myself- Review, May 6, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Something of Myself: For My Friends Known and Unknown (Penguin Twentieth-Century Clas) (Paperback)

Pretty good book with the best facts on Kipling's life I can find so far. Has quite a bit of information on rather obscure parts of his life and his personal life. I found this book very useful in writing a reasearch report on Kipling's life.