Kipling’s Poems – by source

This table is arranged by publication and source.  For the unpublished poems we have relied mainly on the work of Andrew Rutherford and Thomas Pinney.  Rutherford’s account of Kipling’s notebooks, which are held in the Special Collections at the University of Sussex, is particularly helpful.  Kipling sometimes dated poems – presumably indicating completion – and sometimes not.  ‘Sundry Phatasies’ is a collection made for Flo’ Garrard, which he evidently sent her early in 1882.  Some poems – often over pen names – have been recovered from Kipling’s scrap-books.  There are also a number of incomplete poems and fragments, to be found in Pinney’s third volume, which we have not covered in this Guide.

While Kipling was in India he managed the publication of his work himself.  From January 1890, back in England, he relied on the literary agent, A P Watt, whose agency handled his work from then on to the end of his days, with prodigious success, placing it in many journals, mainly in Britain and America.  See Andrew Lycett p. 180.

The most recent authority on the verse and its provenance is the three volume Cambridge Edition edited by Thomas Pinney in 2013.  Detailed notes on each poem can be found in this guide via the poem titles in this table.  These  draw on many sources, including the ‘Old Readers’ Guide’ (ORG) compiled by The Kipling Society, in the 1960s.

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