The Collection
The Kipling Society Library is a research collection that has been steadily built up since the Society was founded in 1927. It offers all of Kipling’s published work, including many rare and unauthorised editions, selections, and translations. Both biography and criticism are well covered, and there are also biographies of contemporaries, and a significant range of specialist works on such relevant subjects as the British Army and the politics of India.
A selection of photographs, cuttings, and ephemera is available, and much of this is being digitised for easier use. Altogether, it can claim to be one of the best facilities of its kind for researchers and enthusiasts.
All of this is housed in the stately archive building ‘The Clock House’ at Haileybury College in Hertfordshire. Kipling’s own United Services College was established by a Haileybury teacher, and eventually became part of Haileybury itself. Thus the collection is associated with the records of an independent school from which many young men went out to join the old East India Company, and we are very grateful to the Governors of Haileybury College for accepting the collection as a gift from the Society, and providing full access to members of the Society and researchers, subject to school regulations.
There is a strict policy of pre-arranged visits to the Library, subject to approval from Dr Sam Koon, Head of Classics and Director of the Archive at Haileybury. You may also contact the Society’s Honorary Librarian.
Access to the Collection
Members of the Kipling Society can use the Library if they liaise with the Honorary Librarian, Mr John Walker, to arrange dates and times.
email: jwawalker@gmail.com
postal address: 56 Chaplin Drive, Headcorn, Ashford, Kent TN27 9TN
telephone: 01622 890366
John Walker is glad to answer enquiries about the library by post, telephone or email.
If he is away, enquiries can be channeled through Mike Kipling, (email: michaelrkipling@gmail.com)
[J.W.A.W.]