A series on twentieth century classics that has concentrated thus far on writers on the colonies would clearly be deficient if it did not deal early on with Rudyard Kipling. He was the first British writer who made his name by writing about India, and is still, I think, one of the most instructive. Of course he began writing in the nineteenth century, and had, in fact, long left India behind as a subject by the time the last century began. Still, he continues to be known best for his Indian writings, the short story collection Plain Tales from the Hills, with which he made his name, The Jungle Book, the strangely wistful poetry, notably ‘The Road to Mandalay’ and ‘Gunga Din’, and of course, his masterpiece, Kim, which is in fact of the new century.

Understandably enough, given the time at which he wrote, he was not an analyst of the colonial experience, as Forster and Scott were, or Joyce Cary for Africa, whom I had to read up hastily when I was asked to teach a course on Colonial Literature when I began working at Peradeniya. The contrast between the presentation of the two situations made clear what Scott enunciated so forcefully, when he talked at the very beginning of The Jewel in the Crown, the first book of the Quartet, of the long embrace between India and Britain,