One Year Before Being Awarded the Nobel Prize, Rudyard Kipling Sympathizes With the Plight of His Beloved India, In Particular the Plight of Native Indian Women

This document has been sold. Contact Us

Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, novelist and short story writer, most notably known for his stories about British imperialism in India and for children such as “The Jungle Book,” one of his best remembered tales. He is also known for his poems, including famous  ones such as “White Man’s Burden” and “The...

Read More

One Year Before Being Awarded the Nobel Prize, Rudyard Kipling Sympathizes With the Plight of His Beloved India, In Particular the Plight of Native Indian Women

Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, novelist and short story writer, most notably known for his stories about British imperialism in India and for children such as “The Jungle Book,” one of his best remembered tales. He is also known for his poems, including famous  ones such as “White Man’s Burden” and “The Female of The Species.” He was born in Bombay, and although he was moved to England at the age of 5, he returned to India and spent several years there as a young man. In 1907 he became the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize and remains its youngest recipient. He died in 1936 at the age of 70 in London.

Kipling had a deep love for India, and through his writings that involve that land we can see a sympathy for it and also for its people. The India we see in Kipling’s writings, for example even in “The Jungle Book,” is one of a protected, enclosed and safe frontier that is threatened by the public world. It is a place where a pleasure filled life can exist apart from the threatening landscape. India is painted as an idealized jungle. Although he respected the British Empire and its practicality and stability, his profound understanding of the pain inflicted upon India and its people by imperialism is shown throughout his writings, which treat such pain with a deep kindness.

Kipling also had an unconventional level of sympathy for woman and their plight for that time, and he was acutely aware of their subservient status in India. His famous poem “Female of the Species,” many say, depicts women as the sex with greater determination, courage, and single-mindedness in the pursuit of what is important in life. This is a much stronger view to take than, for example, the love poems of his time associated with women. He once wrote, “A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty.”

At the height of his popularity and one year before he was awarded the Nobel Prize, Kipling took time out of his busy schedule to write this Autograph Letter Signed, on his Bateman’s Burwash Sussex letterhead, November 7th 1906, to a Miss Dormer.“Many thanks for your interesting letter of the 6th, and it is needless to say how much I sympathize with anything that may be done to lighten the lot of native women in India. But I am afraid the date you fixed is so close on my departure for England that it would be impossible for me to attend the meeting.” In this letter we see not only Kipling’s love and sympathy for his beloved India, but also for its people, in particular, its women.

On an interesting side note, in many of his writings such as “Indian Tales,” (1890) Kipling uses a character named Private Dormer. One can speculate that he was inspired by a relative of this letter’s recipient.

Frame, Display, Preserve

Each frame is custom constructed, using only proper museum archival materials. This includes:The finest frames, tailored to match the document you have chosen. These can period style, antiqued, gilded, wood, etc. Fabric mats, including silk and satin, as well as museum mat board with hand painted bevels. Attachment of the document to the matting to ensure its protection. This "hinging" is done according to archival standards. Protective "glass," or Tru Vue Optium Acrylic glazing, which is shatter resistant, 99% UV protective, and anti-reflective. You benefit from our decades of experience in designing and creating beautiful, compelling, and protective framed historical documents.

Learn more about our Framing Services