The Man Who Would Be King

Stories of criminals, ghosts, femmes fatales, madness, and murder from one of the most magical storytellers in the English language

A Penguin Classic

This selection brings together the best of Rudyard Kipling's short writings, following the development of his work over fifty years. They take us from the harsh, cruel, vividly realized world of the “Indian” stories that made his name, through the experimental modernism of his middle period to the highly-wrought subtleties of his later pieces. Included here is the tale of insanity and empire, “The Man Who Would Be King”; the high-spirited “The Village that Voted the Earth Was Flat”; the fable of childhood cruelty and revenge “Baa Baa, Black Sheep”; the menacing psychological study “Mary Postgate”; and the ambiguous portrayal of grief and mourning in “The Gardener.”

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in Bombay. During his time at the United Services College, he began to write poetry, privately publishing Schoolboy Lyrics in 1881. The following year he started work as a journalist in India, and while there produced a body of work, stories, sketches, and poems —including “Mandalay,” “Gunga Din,” and “Danny Deever”—which made him an instant literary celebrity when he returned to England in 1889. While living in Vermont with his wife, an American, Kipling wrote The Jungle Books, Just So Stories, and Kim—which became widely regarded as his greatest long work, putting him high among the chronicles of British expansion. Kipling returned to England in 1902, but he continued to travel widely and write, though he never enjoyed the literary esteem of his early years. In 1907, he became the first British writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize.