Review: 100 KIPLING POEMS - OLD AND NEW by Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Pinney (Editor)

 

Rudyard Kipling was born in exotic Bombay just as our American Civil War was ending.  In 1907 he earned the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in January of 1936, he died. He was a prolific writer and a brilliant one. And over the course of his life his wrote numerous books and hundreds and hundreds of poems. 

In this new book from Cambridge University Press, editor Tom Pinney has chosen 100 of Kipling's poems to highlight. 25 of these poems were chosen because of their popularity. The other 75 are poems are less familiar.  In fact, a few were never previously published, or they were published only in India or in long defunct magazines.

There are ballads, lyrics, epigrams, and narratives, and the editor has arranged them in chronological order --which I find very intriguing. Certainly it causes me to hope that as I progress through the book that I'll be able to discern a change in the style and thinking of this great writer; whether from maturity or just experience.

The first poem is dated 1883.  The last 1935.

PHYSICAL BOOK vs eBOOK

I have not seen the physical book of RUDYARD KIPLING: 100  POEMS - OLD AND NEW so I can not comment on the quality.  But I have a lot to say about the eVersion of the book which I received from Netgalley.  (These comments assume that what I received is the same as what is offered by the publisher at amazon.)

With the standard and Fire Kindles --I have a first gen Kindle and a first gen Kindle Fire-- your formatting is very much going to be dependent upon the size of your font.  To get one of Kipling's sometimes long lines of text all on one line you are going to have to make the font VERY small. And certainly the format on my kindle did not look anything like the format of the first poem in the Amazon  Preview. On both Kindles the formatting was a mess.  Sometimes there were massive blocks of text where carriage returns should made for easier reading.

CONCLUSION

TOM Pinney's collection is fabulous.  I love that he's included the most familiar poems, as well as ones that will be new to even serious Kipling lovers. And given the current price for the hardback I think this would be an excellent addition to the home shelves of families who enjoy Kipling's work.

I would approach the e-version with some wariness. As I said, I don't know if I have a 'finished' version of the book.  But as it stands it's rather more work than it should be to enjoy these poems.  And this rather saddens me because I'm the sort of person who is a hit-and-run poetry reader.  By which I mean that I might read a poem at lunch if it's sitting conveniently on my Kindle. But I'm not the sort of person who will drag two books along with me in the car --one of them being a selection of poems.

But well worth considering the hard copy.

Pam~

100 KIPLING POEMS - OLD AND NEW

 by Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Pinney (Editor)

Reading Information:
Page Count: 197
no reading information currently available
--sample pages available