Customer Reviews

The Works of Rudyard Kipling

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

There's a reason for many of the negative reviews of the quality of this book. This is because the version of "The Works of Rudyard Kipling" published by General Books LLC is an el cheapo version, created using OCR scanning and an automated scanning device which can miss complete pages. Typos are frequent and there's no table of contents, also, there was absolutely no editing of the book. This is all stated on the publishers web site (google them and read - you'll be as interested as I was when you see all the disclaimers).

The owner of General Books LLC (a company called VDM Publishing), is getting more and more notorious for these ripoffs - almost every review of their books (500,000 or so now listed on Amazon) by an actual buyer is negative, many are extremely so. Also watch out for any books published by Alphascript, Betascript, Fastbooks, Books LLC and LLC Books - all imprints of VDM Publishing. Unfortunately, Amazon is currently doing nothing to protect their customers from this Publishers misleading product descriptions.

If you have bought a paper version from General Books LLC by mistake, you can return to Amazon within 30 days(but make sure you check Amazon's Return Policy for the details)

Okay, maybe I shouldn't complain for a dollar, but the table of contents don't work! On the first page is a table of contents that divides the work into non-fiction, novels, short stories. That one works and takes you to the table of contents for those genres. But those sub-ToCs don't work, nor do any of the others (for example, when you get to the Jungle Book, it has a ToC, but it doesn't work)

Since there is a lot of stuff here (which is great, for 0.99) it is very, very hard to navigate. I ended up walking around in the document until I found the stories I wanted and then used the 'Mark' function, which you can jump to from the 'Go to' menu.

But that's a lot of work. Guess you get what you pay for.

The cover reads "The Works of Rudyard Kipling, Volume II, Rudyard Kipling. The table of contents lists these five sections:

Volume V: Plain Tales from the Hills
Volume VI: The Light that Failed
Volume VII: The Story of the Gadsbys
Volume VIII: From Mine Own People

The "Search inside" link appears to show the Volume I book. It is incorrectly listed as a previous version. I haven't been able to find Volume I for sale and I don't know if there is a Volume III.

This is an odd edition. There are no page numbers in the ToC, no preface, no index, no cover art. The plain tome resembles a computer printout that was typeset and well bound. I guess you could say that it was pure Kipling though.

This is just an unformatted text file. Save the money and go to Project Gutenberg

Unlike other reviews, mine refers to the correct book - The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling, Wordsworth Edition. Before going into its merits, it is necessary to say a few things about Kipling's poems. They are some of the most famous in English; published when poetry was actually popular, they were immediate bestsellers. Indeed, the public has never stopped loving them; there are seemingly fewer poetry fans each year, but Kipling still topped a recent BBC poll of the Greatest English Poems. He remains a favorite not only with poetry buffs but even with many who usually dislike poetry. Kipling has also had a major impact on other writers, as widespread use of his titles, lines, characters, etc. clearly indicates. He has also managed to infiltrate popular culture to a degree rarely seen. Conversely, critics still hotly debate his merits. Some think him a major poet; at least as many think him overrated or downright bad. He had near-universal popularity at the turn of the twentieth century but was critically despised by the time of his 1936 death; the pendulum has swung back and forth somewhat since, but he has never come close to regaining his apex.

Kipling undeniably does several things well. He is a rhythm master with almost unmatched technical deftness and an excellent rhymer. He can truly turn a phrase and is eminently quotable; his lines are indeed so memorable that several, as George Orwell points out, are often used unconsciously by many who have barely heard his name. He is notably diverse and adept at nearly every form he tries. Even his harshest critics cannot deny these virtues. The fact that many of his poems are set in India, Africa, or other distant parts of the British empire also lends notable historical value; we get a good sense of what life was like in this important time and place, all the more interesting in that it is often through the eyes of representative types such as soldiers. Other characteristics are more subjective. For example, Kipling is very straight-forward; his poems are extremely lucid and very accessible, in large part because he relies little on tropes. Those who value simplicity and clearness will appreciate this; others may find it somewhat lightweight.

The real crux, though, is not with form but content. Kipling has long been stereotyped as a jingoist glorifying war and imperialism and is almost ubiquitously accused of xenophobia, narrow-mindedness, mindless patriotism, and racism. His work undeniably has an element of this, but anything more than a superficial reading reveals a wealth of nuances and complexities. For instance, "Recessional," written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, is a thoughtful warning against hubris that is far from the simple-minded flag-waving critics lead one to expect. Works like "The White Man's Burden" seem unambiguously imperialist, though not in a celebratory way, but a few have found subtleties even there. The issue comes to a proverbial head over Kipling's many soldier poems, where he has soldiers speak as they really did - not only with profanity that now seems mild but with casual racism that is now very striking. This at times reaches such a peak that it has made some liberals stop reading and even condemn Kipling - an understandable impulse, but we must look closely. Some defend him by saying he is merely a reporter, but this is a copout. The question of how much he agrees with his soldiers is complex and still hotly debated, but it seems safe to say that - like nearly all men of his time, place, race, and status -, he likely had a milder prejudice. Even so, we must not dismiss the poems automatically, because the prejudice has a valid artistic and even moral purpose. Anything more than a superficial reading shows that Kipling in many ways sympathizes with the victims of this racism, and this comes out in several ways. Most fundamentally, the insight and sympathy the speakers gain for the natives is believable and affecting because of prior prejudice, making the contrast all the more stunning. One must keep this in mind, though some will of course still think the poems unreadable. Kipling is certainly not politically correct by our standards, but this does not mean we should dismiss him automatically; doing so is at least as illiberal as he is said to be, and the literary, entertainment, and educational losses are potentially great.

This makes actually reading Kipling all the more pertinent; only those who have are qualified to judge. There are many collections, but this is notable as an inexpensive, widely available single volume one with all the authorized poems first published in 1940's Definitive Edition - hundreds of works over 850 pages. It is all the Kipling anyone but absolute hard-cores will need, missing only unpublished poems and a small amount never collected. The real question is if it is too much. Even Kipling's greatest fans admit he is uneven; he has a large number of great poems but a significant amount of mediocre ones, and more than a few are simply bad. Casuals may be better off with a selection, but the fact that this has all the poems for little or no more - and in some cases even less - than selected editions arguably makes it a better buy.

Whether or not they want this edition is a very open question. Anyone seeking only the poems will be well-served, but those requiring more should probably look elsewhere. There is substantial supplemental material, especially considering the price, but it is mostly low quality. Unlike some Wordsworth Editions, there is a sizeable Introduction with background on Kipling, the poems, and the historical context plus some initial analysis. We even get Orwell's famous essay on Kipling's poems, perhaps the most important piece of Kipling criticism. However, both Orwell and editor R. T. Jones start by assuming Kipling is a bad poet and defend him to various degrees; this is valuable, perhaps even inevitable, but not an ideal introduction. Those not already familiar with the poems should read them first, as it is hard not to have one's perceptions colored. Unlike nearly every other book in the Wordsworth Poetry Library, this also has quite a few notes - and they are thankfully footnotes, in contrast to the endnotes in Wordsworth fiction editions. This is essential, because Kipling uses a plethora of foreign, technical, and geographical words that are alien to nearly all readers as well as many contemporary and historical references. Numerous poems would be to various degrees incomprehensible without notes, and we should be grateful for them. That said, they have many problems. Words, including foreign ones, that few will know are inexplicably not footnoted - all the more frustrating in that some notes belabor the obvious. A great number of other things that should be footnoted are not; for example, a series of automobile poems parodies a variety of literary works, but only those aware of them will appreciate it, as the notes are silent. Less significantly, words defined once are never defined again, even though there may be hundreds of pages between uses; anyone not reading the book straight through in a short amount of time - i.e., almost everyone - will thus be frequently lost. On a more positive note, the edition differs from many Wordsworth ones by helpfully including a Table of Contents plus title and first line indices.

These complaints are small considering the price, but dedicated readers will be unsatisfied. All others will likely be well-served.

The title of this Kindle item is a lie. As the first sentence of the summary reveals, it does not include any of Kipling's poetry -- so it's anything but "complete".

Too bad that I have to write a negative review but this edition is NOT SUITABLE for the Kindle. The TOC is NOT ACTIVE! When I try to search to get to The Jungle Book it tells me it is NOT INDEXED!

I bought this because it was inexpensive, had an active TOC and was fairly complete. I have fond memories of reading the Jungle Book when young and I wanted to see how my nieces, nephews and grandchildren would react to the stories on the Kindle. Alas, the only way to get there in this edition seems to be by just paging all the way through --- totally impractical.

It will be a long time before I ever buy another item from this publisher.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002VWLMAC/ref=cm_cr_rev_prod_img

One of the things that first attracted my husband and me to each other was that we had both written books about Kipling. His was about Kipling's poetry; mine was about Kipling's use of realism in the American style rather than in the English or Continental European style. But I had written a long term paper on Kipling's poetry, and both of us had memorized large chunks of it. We've been married going on 26 years now, and we still cap each other's quotations, or one of us will begin reciting a poem and the other will pick up, making it a duet.

Kipling's poetry is not much admired these days. I can only assume the reason for that is that nobody reads him. I cannot imagine anyone reading him and not loving him, but too many cutesy poets have ruined poetry for too many readers, who now will not go to the poetry they would like if they had read.

Once in an undergrad speech class the professor proclaimed, "Farewell, romance! But of course you don't know what that means."

Without raising my hand, I shouted, "But all unseen, Romance brought up the nine-fifteen! I do too know what that means."

He forbade me to tell anyone else, and so far as I know none of my classmates ever found the source of the quotation.

Oddly enough, although he was strongly Imperialist in many of his views, he is a very popular writer in the former USSR, as a writer of the working man.

All I can say beyond this is, for heaven's sake and for your own sake, read him for yourself. Don't take anyone else's word about him, especially if they don't like him. He didn't get a Nobel Prize for Literature for playing silly games. He got it for hard, stark realism in such works as THE LIGHT THAT FAILED and KIM.

Read him. Please.

The title of this book is misleading. It is not "The Works of Kipling". It is only one story; in large print. I was not satisfied with it this purchase.

I've loved Kipling's work since I read 'Kim' as a youngster; came to appreciate him even more after serving in the Pacific Rim as a Navy sailor. Taking a Ph.D. in literature simply convinced me that he, while he had the unfortunate experience of becoming politically incorrect late in his career, was as insightful and powerful a poet as Eliot or Pound. Strong words, I know, but choosing to write to people, rather than professors and dilettantes, does not make one either stupid or irrelevant. If only the dawn came up like thunder where I now live. God bless Kipling.