A Diversity of Creatures (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Rudyard Kipling

A legendary storyteller, Rudyard Kipling often drew on his experiences in the colonies of the British Empire when writing verse or short stories. The diversity of stories in this collection amply demonstrates his talent. Included here are, “As Easy as A.B.C.,” “The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat,” and “My Son’s Wife.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Sep 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411440425

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865. After intermittently moving between India and England during his early life, he settled in the latter in 1889, published his novel The Light That Failed in 1891 and married Caroline (Carrie) Balestier the following year. They returned to her home in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote both The Jungle Book and its sequel, as well as Captains Courageous. He continued to write prolifically and was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 but his later years were darkened by the death of his son John at the Battle of Loos in 1915. He died in 1936.

Reviews for A Diversity of Creatures (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Of Miss Mary Postgate, Lady McCausland wrote that she was 'thoroughly conscientious, tidy, companionable, and ladylike. I am very sorry to part with her, and shall always be interested in her welfare.' Miss Fowler engaged her on this recommendation, and to her surprise, for she had had experience of companions, found that it was true.Published in 1917, this book contains both poems and short stories, with the poems often based on the same subject matter as the preceding story. It starts with a single science fiction story and there is also a ghost story, but most of the other stories are about either army life in general and World War I in particular, or life in the British countryside. Two of the stories are linked to Kipling's novel Stalky and Co. which I read as a teenager but remember noting about; Regulus is a school story while the other is about young army officers getting into trouble for 'ragging' each other.More than one of the rural stories features flooding, including the 1914 story "Friendly Brook", and it's interesting that over 100 years ago people already knew that tarmac changed the way that the land drains and can cause flooding.'The brook's got up a piece since morning,' said Jabez. 'Sounds like's if she was over Wickenden's door-stones.'Jesse listened, too. There was a growl in the brook's roar as though she worried something hard.'Yes. She's over Wickenden's door-stones,' he replied. 'Now she'll flood acrost Alder Bay an' that'll ease her.''She won't ease Jim Wickenden's hay none if she do,' Jabez grunted. 'I told Jim he'd set that liddle hay-stack o' his too low down in the medder. I told him so when he was drawin' the bottom for it.''I told him so, too,' said Jesse. 'I told him 'fore ever you did. I told him when the County Council tarred the roads up along.' He pointed up-hill, where unseen automobiles and road-engines droned past continually. 'A tarred road, she shoots every drop o' water into a valley same's a slate roof. 'Tisn't as 'twas in the old days, when the waters soaked in and soaked out in the way o' nature. It rooshes off they tarred roads all of a lump, and naturally every drop is bound to descend into the valley. And there's tar roads both two sides this valley for ten mile. That's what I told Jim Wickenden when they tarred the roads last year. But he's a valley-man. He don't hardly ever journey up-hill.'This is a really diverse collection, and the only story I found hard-going was "The Horse Marines" which is an explanation of why a man's car is given 2 new tyres after his chauffeur gives a lift to some soldiers and they get embroiled in army manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain. Maybe there was just too must early 20th century British army slang for me to cope with.