Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories
by Rudyard Kipling 
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Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories begins with the tale of Percival William Williams (a.k.a. Wee Willie Winkie) and how one fateful journey forces him to enter his manhood and leave his childish ways behind him. This story and the delightful tales that follow are some of Kipling's best-loved works and paint an enduring picture of British life in the Indian Subcontinent.Tags
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Some of Kipling's work holds up well against modern sensibilities - these stories don't. Tales of adultery and affairs, ghost stories, and sweetly lisping children - all set in British India.
It is quite interesting to contrast the children in these stories ('I don't know what vat means,' said Wee Willie Winkie, 'but you mustn't call me Winkie any no more. I'm Percival Will'am Will'ams.') with the much more famous Kim. They are tougher and more moral than their elders, to the point of dying in front of them (The Drums of the Fore and Aft), so perhaps this is just a last flowering of Victorian sentimentalism.
For those who have only seen the film of The Man who would be King, you will find the original tale rather different.
It is quite interesting to contrast the children in these stories ('I don't know what vat means,' said Wee Willie Winkie, 'but you mustn't call me Winkie any no more. I'm Percival Will'am Will'ams.') with the much more famous Kim. They are tougher and more moral than their elders, to the point of dying in front of them (The Drums of the Fore and Aft), so perhaps this is just a last flowering of Victorian sentimentalism.
For those who have only seen the film of The Man who would be King, you will find the original tale rather different.
Also includes: In an Opium Factory; Among the Railway Folk; To Be Filed for Reference; By Word of Mouth; Wressley of the Foreign Office; On the Strength of a Likeness; The Story of Muhammad Din; gate of the Hundred Sorrows; Drums in the Fore and Aft; His Majesty the King; Baa Baa Black Sheep.
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2,470+ Works 91,181 Members
Kipling, who as a novelist dramatized the ambivalence of the British colonial experience, was born of English parents in Bombay and as a child knew Hindustani better than English. He spent an unhappy period of exile from his parents (and the Indian heat) with a harsh aunt in England, followed by the public schooling that inspired his "Stalky" show more stories. He returned to India at 18 to work on the staff of the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette and rapidly became a prolific writer. His mildly satirical work won him a reputation in England, and he returned there in 1889. Shortly after, his first novel, The Light That Failed (1890) was published, but it was not altogether successful. In the early 1890s, Kipling met and married Caroline Balestier and moved with her to her family's estate in Brattleboro, Vermont. While there he wrote Many Inventions (1893), The Jungle Book (1894-95), and Captains Courageous (1897). He became dissatisfied with life in America, however, and moved back to England, returning to America only when his daughter died of pneumonia. Kipling never again returned to the United States, despite his great popularity there. Short stories form the greater portion of Kipling's work and are of several distinct types. Some of his best are stories of the supernatural, the eerie and unearthly, such as "The Phantom Rickshaw," "The Brushwood Boy," and "They." His tales of gruesome horror include "The Mark of the Beast" and "The Return of Imray." "William the Conqueror" and "The Head of the District" are among his political tales of English rule in India. The "Soldiers Three" group deals with Kipling's three musketeers: an Irishman, a Cockney, and a Yorkshireman. The Anglo-Indian Tales, of social life in Simla, make up the larger part of his first four books. Kipling wrote equally well for children and adults. His best-known children's books are Just So Stories (1902), The Jungle Books (1894-95), and Kim (1901). His short stories, although their understanding of the Indian is often moving, became minor hymns to the glory of Queen Victoria's empire and the civil servants and soldiers who staffed her outposts. Kim, an Irish boy in India who becomes the companion of a Tibetan lama, at length joins the British Secret Service, without, says Wilson, any sense of the betrayal of his friend this actually meant. Nevertheless, Kipling has left a vivid panorama of the India of his day. In 1907, Kipling became England's first Nobel Prize winner in literature and the only nineteenth-century English poet to win the Prize. He won not only on the basis of his short stories, which more closely mirror the ambiguities of the declining Edwardian world than has commonly been recognized, but also on the basis of his tremendous ability as a popular poet. His reputation was first made with Barrack Room Ballads (1892), and in "Recessional" he captured a side of Queen Victoria's final jubilee that no one else dared to address. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1890
- Related movies
- The Man Who Would Be King (1975 | IMDb)
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Statistics
- Members
- 113
- Popularity
- 287,957
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.94)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 10
- ASINs
- 21
