Surf Wiki
Save to docs
general/1888-short-story-collections

From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Plain Tales from the Hills

1888 collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling

1888 collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling

FieldValue
namePlain Tales from the Hills
imagePlaintalesfromthehills1888.jpg
captionCover of the First Edition (1888)
authorRudyard Kipling (English)
countryBritish India
languageEnglish
publisherThacker, Spink & Company, Calcutta
release_date1888
media_typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)

Plain Tales from the Hills (published 1888) is the first collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Out of its 40 stories, "eight-and-twenty", according to Kipling's Preface, were initially published in the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, Punjab, British India between November 1886 and June 1887. "The remaining tales are, more or less, new." (Kipling had worked as a journalist for the CMG—his first job—since 1882, when he was not quite 17.)

The title refers, by way of a pun on "Plain" as the reverse of "Hills", to the deceptively simple narrative style; and to the fact that many of the stories are set in the Hill Station of Simla—the "summer capital of the British Raj" during the hot weather. Not all of the stories are, in fact, about life in "the Hills": Kipling gives sketches of many aspects of life in British India.

The tales include the first appearances, in book form, of Mrs. Hauksbee, the policeman Strickland, and the Soldiers Three (Privates Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd).

In the preface to his short stories collection "Dr. Brodie's Report", Jorge Luis Borges wrote he was inspired by the quality and conciseness of Plain Tales from the Hills.

The stories

  • "Lispeth"
  • "Three and – an Extra"
  • "Thrown Away"
  • "Miss Youghal's Sais"
  • "'Yoked with an Unbeliever'"
  • "False Dawn"
  • "The Rescue of Pluffles"
  • "Cupid's Arrows"
  • "The Three Musketeers"
  • "His Chance in Life"
  • "Watches of the Night"
  • "The Other Man"
  • "Consequences"
  • "The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin"
  • "The Taking of Lungtungpen"
  • "A Germ-Destroyer"
  • "Kidnapped"
  • "The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly"
  • "In the House of Suddhoo"
  • "His Wedded Wife"
  • "The Broken-Link Handicap"
  • "Beyond the Pale"
  • "In Error"
  • "A Bank Fraud"
  • "Tods' Amendment"
  • "The Daughter of the Regiment"
  • "In the Pride of his Youth"
  • "Pig"
  • "The Rout of the White Hussars"
  • "The Bronckhorst Divorce-case"
  • "Venus Annodomini"
  • "The Bisara of Pooree"
  • "A Friend's Friend"
  • "The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows"
  • "The Madness of Private Ortheris"
  • "The Story of Muhammad Din"
  • "On the Strength of a Likeness"
  • "Wressley of the Foreign Office"
  • "By Word of Mouth"
  • "To be Filed for Reference"

Some of the characters in these stories reappear in the novel Kim.

References

  • Carpenter, H. and M. Prichard. 1984. The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.
Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

1888-short-story-collections short-story-collections-by-rudyard-kipling english-language-books
Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Plain Tales from the Hills — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report