Primary Sources: People - Victorian Era: Kipling, Rudyard

"Four complementary collections in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division richly document the life and works of the British author, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). The William Montelle Carpenter Collection, presented to the Library by his widow, Mrs. Lucile Russell Carpenter in 1941, contains autograph manuscripts of Kipling's stories and poems, original letters, drawings, corrected galley proofs, photographs, auction catalogs, books about Kipling, pamphlets, periodicals, and an unusually large collection of early printed editions. Among the manuscripts is the earliest known draft of "Mowgli's Brothers," the first story of The Jungle Book, which Kipling inscribed to Susan Bishop. The collection also includes such items of associational interest as a copy of Euclid's Elements which Kipling annotated while studying at the United Services College at Westward Ho, North Devon, and a set of dessert plates on which Kipling painted fruit and wrote verse. The Carpenters based their biographical sketch, Rudyard Kipling, a Friendly Profile, on material in their 1,675 item collection. Some material is described in William Montelle Carpenter's A Few Significant and Important Kipling Items! The Library also offers some black and white images from this collection as captured by the Prints and Photographs Division."

"In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClure’s Magazine, the poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied the poem and sent it to his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.” Not everyone was as favorably impressed as Roosevelt. The racialized notion of the “White Man’s burden” became a euphemism for imperialism, and many anti-imperialists couched their opposition in reaction to the phrase."