The age of Kipling

Kipling is a writer who in many ways lends himself to over-simplification, and he is still no doubt most commonly thought of, not without reason, as a kind of cartoon figure, a handy textbook symbol of the Empire that was. Yet he was in fact far more contradictory and many-sided than either friends or foes generally gave him credit for being during his own lifetime, and if the essays in this collection range widely both in theme and approach, it is in an effort to capture something of his complexity and versatility. The man who emerges may often have chosen to take a bold or even crude line, but it was not through any lack of subtlety in his own make-up; he may have had among his other gifts an almost unequalled talent for coining slogans and catchphrases, but he himself defies any easy formula or summing-up. - Foreword.