The Man Who Would Be King

Selected Stories

Introduction by Jan Montefiore

Edited by Jan Montefiore

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Stories of criminals, ghosts, femmes fatales, madness, and murder from one of the most magical storytellers in the English language

A Penguin Classic

This selection brings together the best of Rudyard Kipling's short writings, following the development of his work over fifty years. They take us from the harsh, cruel, vividly realized world of the “Indian” stories that made his name, through the experimental modernism of his middle period to the highly-wrought subtleties of his later pieces. Included here is the tale of insanity and empire, “The Man Who Would Be King”; the high-spirited “The Village that Voted the Earth Was Flat”; the fable of childhood cruelty and revenge “Baa Baa, Black Sheep”; the menacing psychological study “Mary Postgate”; and the ambiguous portrayal…

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July 26, 2011

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Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, to British parents on December 30, 1865. In 1871 Rudyard and his sister, Trix, aged three, were left to be cared for by a couple in Southsea, England. Five years passed before he saw his parents again. His sense of desertion and despair were later expressed in his story "Baa Baa, Black Sheep" (1888), in his novel The Light That Failed (1890), and in his autobiography, Something of Myself (1937). As late as 1935, Kipling still spoke bitterly of the "House of Desolation" at Southsea: "I should like to burn it down and plough the place with salt." Kipling and his wife settled in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote The Jungle Book (1894),…