Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

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Plain Tales from the Hills

, one of the most extraordinary collections of short fiction to appear in the nineteenth century, was published in Calcutta and London in January 1888. A second edition, with revisions, came out the next year, to be followed by a reissue in London and New York in 1890. By that time the Kipling boom was well and truly launched. Henry James and Andrew Lang were among the volume's many metropolitan admirers. Turning its pages, in the opinion of Oscar Wilde, “one feels as if one were seated under a palm-tree reading life by superb flashes of vulgarity”.

A series of thirty-nine short Anglo-Indian stories called “Plain Tales from the Hills” had begun to appear as “turnovers” in the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette towards the end of 1886, most of them

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Citation: Kerr, Douglas. "Plain Tales from the Hills". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 October 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2777, accessed 29 March 2024.]

2777 Plain Tales from the Hills 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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