Theme of the Week: Rudyard Kipling

The theme for this week is Rudyard Kipling, an English author, famous for his works,  Just So Stories and The Jungle Book which earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.

Just So Stories, was a in part a tribute to his late daughter, for whom Kipling had originally crafted the stories as he put her to bed. The book’s name had in fact come from Josephine, who told her father he had to repeat each tale as he always had, or “just so,” as Josephine often said.

Below is a link to Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “If-” spoken by the famous British actor Sir Michael Caine. It is a tribute to Leander Starr Jameson and is written in the form of paternal advice to the poet’s son. As poetry, “If—” is a literary example of Victorian-era stoicism.