This is a fascinating selection of Kipling's most famous short stories, bringing together the very best of his work. Lile's Handicap reflects his experiences of India.and contains two horror stories which permeate the collection with an air of haunted destinies.Delusions and obsessions, past lives and the slums of London in 1890 arc the fascinatingly diverse topics featured in Many Invcntions. While Traffics and Discovcrics contains three tales in which the subject matter ranges from unexplained mystery and the supernatural to an other-worldly house full of elusive but charming children. The Maltcsc Cat is Kipling's well-loved story about a polo pony.These stories remind us once again that Kipling is an undisputed master of story-telling.

Rudyard Kipling has always been a controversial literary figure.Enormously successful during his own lifetime, at one stage he achieved virtually the status of a national hero. Yet even then he had his critics, and was accused by some of crudeness and brutality.Though sales of his books never faltered, his reputation declined after he returned to England from the Boer War, and in recent times the jingoistic note and strident championing of British imperialism that mark his work have made him tmfashionable. However, Kipling was the first British writer ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and if some of his attitudes now seem questionable, his work has an undeniable power. He remains a cherished children"s author, an esteemed and widely quoted poet, and a very fine storyteller of a particular era.

Kipling"s tales for children are perhaps his best-loved, yet all his stories have admirable features. This representative selection comprises thirteen tales taken from four of his many published volumes,The Day"s Work of I889, Life"s Handicap of I89I, Many Inventions of I893 and Traffics and Discoveries of I9O4. Subjects and locations vary widely, reflecting the much travelled author"s own experience, and the vast range of his interests.

The Courting of Dinah Shadd

On Greenhow Hill

At the End of the Passage

The Limitations of Pambe Serang

The Disturber of Traffic

"The Finest Story in the World"

The Record of Badalia Herodrfoot

The Ship that Found Herself

The Maltese Cat

"Wireless"

"They"

Mrs Bathurst

Below the Mill Dam