The Eighteen Nineties by Holbrook Jackson — Read

In the year 1890 people in this country were beginning to tell each other about, and to ask each other about, a young Anglo-Indian storyteller whose works were to be found in a series of pamphlets published by Messrs A. H. Wheeler & Co., of Allahabad, in "The Indian Railway Library. " On inquiry also it was discovered that this same storyteller was the son of an Anglo-Indian official, and that he himself was engaged in the Indian Civil Service, that he had become the laureate of Governmental circles, and that his clever verses had been collected in a volume called _Departmental Ditties_. The demand to know more about this remarkable young man grew until it was found necessary to publish his stories in England.

It was in the year 1890 that the short stories of Rudyard Kipling became accessible to English readers through the normal channels of publication. Thus came to us, bringing with them the scent and heat, the colour and passion of the East in all its splendours and seductiveness, the now world-famous series of short stories, beginning with _Plain Tales from the Hills_, in which we were introduced to the vitriolic Mrs Hawksbee, and _Soldiers Three_, with Privates Stanley Ortheris, John Learoyd and the immortal Terence Mulvaney. These people immediately entered into our consciousness, taking their place beside the great comic figures of fiction, those characters whom we all know so much better than many people we meet in real life. Of a sudden we found ourselves enjoying a largess of short stories such as the English language had not known before. The mere recital of the titles of the little genius-laden volumes issued during that year recalls artistic experiences little short of thrilling -- _The Story of the Gadsbys_, _In Black and White_, _Under the Deodars_, _The Phantom 'Rickshaw_, _Wee Willie Winkie_, _The Courting of Dinah Shadd_ and _The City of Dreadful Night_. Then came a long story, _The Light that Failed_, and we realised that this new writer had in him the making of a novelist as well as a great storyteller; a promise, however, not yet achieved. But none who read the _Departmental Ditties_ could have foretold a poet, although the appearance in the Press of occasional verses over the name of Kipling was beginning to make us realise that very shortly it would be necessary to consider some of the new author's metrical work in the light of poetry; and when, in 1892, a volume called _Barrack Room Ballads and Other Verses_ made its appearance it was as though a bombshell had burst among the seats of literary judgment, and, amidst stimulating shouts of approval, academic criticism was faced with the necessity of revising its idea of poetry, and ultimately of making room for a new poet.