Mary Postgate

Written by Rudyard Kipling

Narrated by Cathy Dobson

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist.

Mary Postgate is a horrifying story, and like much of Kipling's work it can be interpreted in different ways. It was written as propaganda in 1915 during World War I against the background of German atrocities and massacres in France, and just after German aircraft had engaged in bombing raids on English towns.

Mary Postgate was intended to inspire English readers with just such cold-blooded courage and ruthlessness as Mary herself displays. It is also, however, a portrait of a woman who finds release from societal, psychological, and sexual pressures in the context of war: the deaths of Wynn and little Edna Gerrit are not so much reasons as excuses for the behavior Mary indulges in.

Kipling provides us with detailed motivation of Mary's actions, so we understand why she behaves as she does: the story is full of ominous warning signs which prepare us for the dreadful climax. And the climax becomes more terrifying, more ghastly, the more carefully we listen to it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Door Consulting
• Release date: Aug 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781509448647

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English author and poet who began writing in India and shortly found his work celebrated in England. An extravagantly popular, but critically polarizing, figure even in his own lifetime, the author wrote several books for adults and children that have become classics, Kim, The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Captains Courageous and others. Although taken to task by some critics for his frequently imperialistic stance, the author’s best work rises above his era’s politics. Kipling refused offers of both knighthood and the position of Poet Laureate, but was the first English author to receive the Nobel prize.