If: The Untold Story of Kipling's American Years

Benfey (Andrew Mellon Professor of English, Mt. Holyoke Coll., MA) has written extensively on the U.S. Gilded Age (e.g., A Summer of Hummingbirds). This latest study focuses on Anglo-Indian author Rudyard Kipling (1865–1963) and his experiences in America from 1889 to 1999. With each chapter, Benfey highlights a single theme/perspective that illuminates America's effect on Kipling, his influence on American friends and colleagues such as Mark Twain, as well as significant events: a visit to the grave of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the death of companion Wolcott Balestier, going to the Washington Zoo. The final chapter concentrates on the Vietnam War and Kipling's reflections on the imperialism and complexity of this conflict on the American psyche. Interwoven throughout are insights into the writer's relationships with his family and political and literary figures, including Theodore Roosevelt, Henry James, and Henry Adams.