Kim: A Norton Critical Edition

Written in 1901, Kim is considered Kipling's finest work, and was a key factor in his being awarded the Nobel Prize.

The text―that of the 1901 Sussex Edition―is fully annotated and accompanied by three maps that help students place the novel in geographical and historical contexts.

"Backgrounds" explores the novel's complicated issues of multiculturalism, imperialism, and racism, allowing readers to glimpse Kipling's personal thoughts about British expansionism.  Included are two short stories, poems, and letters by Kipling, as well as autobiographical and biographical memoirs and contemporary reviews of Kim.

"Criticism" collects fourteen wide-ranging assessments of the novel by Noel Annan, Irving Howe, Edward Said, Ian Baucom, A. Michael Matin, John A. McClure, Anne Parry, Michael Hollington, Parama Roy, Sara Suleri, Patrick Williams, Suvir Kaul, Mark Kinkead-Weekes, and Zohreh T. Sullivan.

A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are included.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in Bombay, India, but raised in England until he returned to India in 1881 as a journalist and local newspaper editor. In 1907 Kipling became the first English writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature. A poet and prolific short story writer, he is best known as the author of The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1902), and Just So Stories (1902).


Zohreh T. Sullivan is Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  She is the author of Narratives of Empire: The Fictions of Rudyard Kipling, Exiled Memories: Stories of Iranian Diaspora, and many articles on British, colonial, and postcolonial literatures.