The Light that Failed - Softcover

Kipling, Rudyard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1906469199 ISBN 13: 9781906469191

Publisher: Victorian Secrets, 2011

Synopsis

Originally published in 1891, The Light that Failed is Rudyard Kipling’s semi-autobiographical first novel. Critics who had praised him for Plain Tales from the Hills were shocked at the unhappy ending and deviation from his usual style, but none could deny the power of Kipling’s writing.The Light that Failed tells the story of war artist Dick Heldar, his doomed love for childhood sweetheart Maisie, and his descent into blindness. Through Dick, Kipling considers the relationship between Art and Life, espousing his belief that the artist has a duty to paint only what he knows to be true.The reality pursued by Kipling is vividly portrayed in his descriptions of the battlefields of the Sudan and the fleshpits of Port Said. These near-Naturalistic depictions led to comparisons with Zola and show a very different Kipling from the one famous for his Anglo-Indian tales.This edition includes: * critical introduction * biography of Kipling * suggestions for further reading * explanatory footnotes * alternative “happy ending” from the serialised version in Lippincott’s Magazine * contemporary reviews * extracts from The City of Dreadful Night, Fuzzy Wuzzy, Vitaï Lampada, and The Picture of Dorian Gray* Dürer’s Melencolia I

About this title

About the Author:

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet and novelist. Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901) and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). His poems include "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (1919), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), and "If-" (1910). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature and one critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous narrative gift". --Wikipedia

Review:

Novel by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1890. The book, which includes autobiographical elements, describes the youth and manhood of Dick Heldar and traces his efforts as a war correspondent and artist whose sketches of British battles in the Sudan become popular. When he returns to London, he begins painting his masterpiece, racing against time because a battle wound has caused his eyesight to progressively fail. Kipling wrote two separate endings to The Light That Failed, a happy ending for the version published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in January 1890 and an unhappy ending for the version published in book form a few months later. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

About this edition

• Publisher: Victorian Secrets
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1906469199
• ISBN 13: 9781906469191
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 215
• Editor: Fox Paul