Publications
The Unforgiving Minute: Life of Rudyard Kipling, by Harry Ricketts, published 1999 (xii + 434 pp., London: Chatto & Windus, ISBN-10: 0701137444 & ISBN-13: 9780701137441) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries
Abstract:Harry Ricketts presents a vivid study of Kipling's life in relation to his work, cutting through the myths that surround him. Ricketts explores Kipling's passions, his imperialism, his thirst to find a home and his increasing reclusiveness.
Rudyard Kipling: A Life, by Harry Ricketts, published 27 December 2000 (448 pp., Carroll & Graf Publishes Inc, ISBN-10: 0786707119 & ISBN-13: 9780786707119)
Abstract:This absorbing, widely praised biography brings a fresh and sympathetic eye to the career of the prolific writer whose popular Jungle Books and collections of poems like Barracks Room Ballads as well as the masterly novel Kim propelled him to the pinnacle of literary success before he was forty. With illuminative reinterpretations of his work, it also follows Kipling through the next three decades that took this complex, troubled, and brilliant man to tragic personal disappointments and galling disrepute among the lions of literary fashion. In all, biographer Ricketts brings vibrantly to life the diverse worlds of imperialist India and Victorian London that both inspired and betrayed Kipling's genius.