How the Just So Stories Were Made

The Brilliance and Tragedy Behind Kipling’s Celebrated Tales for Little Children

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Pub Date 25 May 2021 | Archive Date 31 May 2021
Yale University Press, London | Yale University Press

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Description

A fascinating, richly illustrated exploration of the poignant origins of Rudyard Kipling’s world-famous children’s classic

“In this concise and remarkable book . . . Batchelor guides us expertly . . . drawing on multiple sources and making intriguing connections between Kipling’s stories for children and for adults.”—John Carey, The Sunday Times 

From "How the Leopard Got Its Spots" to "The Elephant’s Child," Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories have delighted readers across the world for more than a century. In this original study, John Batchelor explores the artistry with which Kipling created the Just So Stories, using each tale as an entry point into the writer’s life and work—including the tragedy that shadows much of the volume, the death of his daughter Josephine.
 
Batchelor details the playful challenges the stories made to contemporary society. In his stories Kipling played with biblical and other stories of creation and imagined fantastical tales of animals' development and man's discovery of literacy.
 
Richly illustrated with original drawings and family photographs, this account reveals Kipling’s public and private lives—and sheds new light on a much-loved and tremendously influential classic.
A fascinating, richly illustrated exploration of the poignant origins of Rudyard Kipling’s world-famous children’s classic

“In this concise and remarkable book . . . Batchelor guides us expertly...

Advance Praise

“A scrupulous and poignant account of how love and loss inspired the Just So Stories”—Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian

'John Batchelor is the perfect commentator on the Just so Stories: unobtrusive, knowledgeable, striking just the right balance between literary gossip and erudite illumination. He renews the delight of reading Kipling at his best.’—Alberto Manguel


“A scrupulous and poignant account of how love and loss inspired the Just So Stories”—Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian

'John Batchelor is the perfect commentator on the Just so Stories: unobtrusive...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780300237184
PRICE $25.00 (USD)
PAGES 240

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Average rating from 4 members


Featured Reviews

This is a brisk and bouncy little book - full of hectic energy. Batchelor pegs his chapters to the the various Just So Stories, running through them and adding biographical and critical information as occasion suggests. It replicates a kind of oral storytelling whose artful risk-taking and flirting with chaos is the key to its contract with the reader - its a performance of a book and it has great appeal.

Batchelor quotes generously from each story as he introduces and this helps set the rhythm. His deliberate jumble-structure means he is always diving into Kipling’s life-story/story-life in the midst of things, which all need explaining (this dance-step manner of back-and-forth progress is also evident in the quoted passages of Kipling). As the different stories suggest different aspects of Kipling’s mind, art, and biography we are always in the middle of some or other new topic, angle, or anecdote. That to-ing and fro-ing, with many things happening at once, mirrors the way Kipling’s wrote and lived.

Kipling has been quite well served by biographers and critical editors. Batchelor, has read up on it all, but doesn’t want to add to that academic pile, so much as provide a well-informed book that seeks to capture Kipling’s enduring appeal. It will probably only take 2-3hrs to read through, which I think will encourage more people actually to read it through - and turn back to Kipling himself.

It reminded me of Roger Lancelyn Green’s short biographies of popular children’s writers (Andrew Lang, Kipling, J.M. Barrie, Mrs Molesworth, &c) - the point is to be fun about writers who were fun. I think this book wholly succeeds in its aim - best wishes to it!!

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