recognized in India, but it was not till the books reached England that his true rank was appreciated and proclaimed. Between 1887 and 1889 he travelled through India, China, Japan and America, finally arriving in England to find himself already famous. His travel sketches, contributed to The Civil and Military Gazette and The Pioneer, were afterwards collected (the author’s hand having been forced by unauthorized publication) in the two volumes From Sea to Sea (1899). A further set of Indian tales, equal to the best, appeared in Macmillan’s Magazine and were republished with others in Life’s Handicap (1891). In The Light that Failed (1891, after appearing with a different ending in Lippincott’s Magazine) Mr Kipling essayed his first long story (dramatized 1905), but with comparative unsuccess. In his subsequent work his delight in the display of descriptive and verbal technicalities grew on him. His polemic against “the sheltered life” and “little Englandism” became more didactic. His terseness sometimes degenerated into abruptness and obscurity. But in the meanwhile his genius became prominent in verse. Readers of the Plain Tales had been impressed by the snatches of poetry prefixed to them for motto, certain of them being subscribed “Barrack Room Ballad.” Mr Kipling now contributed to the National Observer, then edited by W. E. Henley, a series of Barrack Room Ballads. These vigorous verses in soldier slang, when published in a book in 1892, together with the fine ballad of “East and West” and other poems, won for their author a second fame, wider than he had attained as a story-teller. In this volume the Ballads of the “Bolivar” and of the “Clampherdown,” introducing Mr Kipling’s poetry of the ocean and the engine-room, and “The Flag of England,” finding a voice for the Imperial sentiment, which—largely under the influence of Mr Kipling’s own writings—had been rapidly gaining force in England, gave the key-note of much of his later verse. In 1898 Mr Kipling paid the first of several visits to South Africa and became imbued with a type of imperialism that reacted on his literature, not altogether to its advantage. Before finally settling in England Mr Kipling lived some years in America and married in 1892 Miss Caroline Starr Balestier, sister of the Wolcott Balestier to whom he dedicated Barrack Room Ballads, and with whom in collaboration he wrote the Naulahka (1891), one of his less successful books. The next collection of stories, Many Inventions (1893), contained the splendid Mulvaney extravaganza, “My Lord the Elephant”; a vividly realized tale of metempsychosis, “The Finest Story in the World”; and in that fascinating tale “In the Rukh,” the prelude to the next new exhibition of the author’s genius. This came in 1894 with The Jungle Book, followed in 1895 by The Second Jungle Book. With these inspired beast-stories Kipling conquered a new world and a new audience, and produced what many critics regard as his most flawless work. His chief subsequent publications were The Seven Seas (poems), 1896; Captains Courageous (a yarn of deep-sea fishery), 1897; The Day’s Work (collected stories), 1898; A Fleet in Being (an account of a cruise in a man-of-war), 1898; Stalky and Co. (mentioned above), 1899; From Sea to Sea (mentioned above), 1899; Kim, 1901; Just So Stories (for children), 1902; The Five Nations (poems, concluding with what proved Mr Kipling’s most universally known and popular poem, “Recessional,” originally published in The Times on the 17th of July 1897 on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s second jubilee), 1903; Traffics and Discoveries (collected stories), 1904; Puck of Pook’s Hill (stories), 1906; Actions and Reactions (stories), 1909. Of these Kim was notable as far the most successful of Mr Kipling’s longer narratives, though it is itself rather in the nature of a string of episodes. But everything he wrote, even to a farcical extravaganza inspired by his enthusiasm for the motor-car, breathed the meteoric energy that was the nature of the man. A vigorous and unconventional poet, a pioneer in the modern phase of literary Imperialism, and one of the rare masters in English prose of the art of the short story, Mr Kipling had already by the opening of the 20th century won the most conspicuous place among the creative literary forces of his day. His position in English literature was recognized in 1907 by the award to him of the Nobel prize.
See Rudyard Kipling’s chapter in My First Book (Chatto, 1894); “A Bibliography of Rudyard Kipling,” by John Lane, in Rudyard Kipling: a Criticism, by Richard de Gallienne; “Mr Kipling’s Short Stories” in Questions at Issue, by Edmund Gosse (1893); “Mr Kipling’s Stories” in Essays in Little, by Andrew Lang; “Mr Kipling’s Stories,” by J. M. Barrie in the Contemporary Review (March 1891); articles in the Quarterly Review (July 1892) and Edinburgh Review (Jan. 1898); and section on Kipling in Poets of the Younger Generation, by William Archer (1902). See also for bibliography to 1903 English Illustrated Magazine, new series, vol. xxx. pp. 298 and 429–432. (W. P. J.)
KIPPER, properly the name by which the male salmon is
known at some period of the breeding season. At the approach
of this season the male fish develops a sharp cartilaginous beak,
known as the “kip,” from which the name “kipper” is said to be
derived. The earliest uses of the word (in Old English cypera
and Middle English kypre) seem to include salmon of both sexes,
and there is no certainty as to the etymology. Skeat derives it
from the Old English kippian, “to spawn.” The term has been
applied by various writers to salmon both during and after
milting; early quotations leave the precise meaning of the word
obscure, but generally refer to the unwholesomeness of the fish
as food during the whole breeding season. It has been usually
accepted, without much direct evidence, that from the practice
of rendering the breeding (i.e. “kipper”) salmon fit for food by
splitting, salting and smoke-drying them, the term “kipper”
is also used of other fish, particularly herrings cured in the same
way. The “bloater” as distinct from the “kipper” is a herring
cured whole without being split open.
KIPPIS, ANDREW (1725–1795), English nonconformist divine
and biographer, son of Robert Kippis, a silk-hosier, was born at
Nottingham on the 28th of March 1725. From school at
Sleaford in Lincolnshire he passed at the age of sixteen to the
nonconformist academy at Northampton, of which Dr Doddridge
was then president. In 1746 Kippis became minister
of a church at Boston; in 1750 he removed to Dorking in
Surrey; and in 1753 he became pastor of a Presbyterian congregation
at Westminster, where he remained till his death on
the 8th of October 1795. Kippis took a prominent part in the
affairs of his church. From 1763 till 1784 he was classical and
philological tutor in Coward’s training college at Hoxton; and
subsequently for some years at another institution of the same
kind at Hackney. In 1778 he was elected a fellow of the
Antiquarian Society, and a fellow of the Royal Society in 1779.
Kippis was a very voluminous writer. He contributed largely to The Gentleman’s Magazine, The Monthly Review and The Library; and he had a good deal to do with the establishment and conduct of The New Annual Register. He published also a number of sermons and occasional pamphlets; and he prefixed a life of the author to a collected edition of Dr Nathaniel Lardner’s Works (1788). He wrote a life of Dr Doddridge, which is prefixed to Doddridge’s Exposition of the New Testament (1792). His chief work is his edition of the Biographia Britannica, of which, however, he only lived to publish 5 vols. (folio, 1778–1793). In this work he had the assistance of Dr Towers. See notice by A. Rees, D.D., in The New Annual Register for 1795.
KIRBY, WILLIAM (1759–1850), English entomologist, was
born at Witnesham in Suffolk on the 19th of September 1759.
From the village school of Witnesham he passed to Ipswich
grammar school, and thence to Caius College, Cambridge,
where he graduated in 1781. Taking holy orders in 1782, he
spent his entire life in the peaceful seclusion of an English
country parsonage at Barham in Suffolk. His favourite study
was natural history; and eventually entomology engrossed all
his leisure. His first work of importance was his Monographia
Apum Angliae (2 vols. 8vo, 1802), which as the first scientific
treatise on its subject brought him into notice with the leading
entomologists of his own and foreign countries. The practical
result of a friendship formed in 1805 with William Spence, of
Hull, was the jointly written Introduction to Entomology (4 vols.,
1815–1826; 7th ed., 1856), one of the most popular books of
science that have ever appeared. In 1830 he was chosen to
write one of the Bridgewater Treatises, his subject being The
History, Habits, and Instincts of Animals (2 vols., 1835). This
undeniably fell short of his earlier works in point of scientific
value. He died on the 4th of July 1850.
