The Smith Administration

First Publication of the Individual stories

I.	The Cow-House Jirga	4 November 1887	CMG
II.	A Bazar Dhulip	21 November 1887	CMG
III.	The Hands of Justice	15 July 1887	CMG
IV.	The Serai Cabal	8 August 1887	CMG
V.	The Story of a King	17 October 1887	CMG
VI.	The Great Census	9 January 1888	CMG
VII.	The Killing of Hatim Tai	12 May 1888	CMG
VIII.	A Self-Made Man	10 May 1888	CMG
IX.	The Vengeance of Lal Beg	3 November 1887	CMG
X.	Hunting a Miracle	10 October 1887	CMG
XI.	The Explanation of Mir Baksh	1 June 1888	CMG
XII.	A Letter from Golam Singh	10 September 1886	CMG
XIII.	The Writing of Yakub Khan	18 January 1888	Pioneer
XIV	A King’s Ashes	30 December 1887	Pioneer
XV.	The Bride’s Progress	8 February 1888	Pioneer Mail
XVI.	‘A District at Play’	27 August 1886	CMG
XVII.	What it Comes To	5 November1886	CMG
XVIII.	The Opinions of Gunner Barnabas	7 October 1887	CMG

Background

Of this series of eighteen stories, collected in From Sea to Sea, vol.II, only the first six listed below are to do with “Smith” and his household staff.

Kipling has added a footnote on the first page which reads:

The following are newspaper articles written between 1887 and 1888 for my paper.—R.K.

In November 1887 Kipling was transferred from the Civil and Military Gazette (or CMG for short) in Lahore to the Pioneer in Allahabad.

Publication History of the Collected Series

In 1891 a volume of this title was published in India but that was immediately suppressed. It contained the same 18 stories now collected in “The Smith Administration”, From Sea to Sea, Volume II, together with two additional stories, neither of which were subsequently collected.

Commentary

The ‘Private Services Commission’ is referred to in three of the “Smith” stories. In order of publication they are “The Hands of Justice”, “The Serai Cabal”, and “The Great Census”.

Kipling was satirising the Public Services Commission, which was set up in 1886 to look at recruitment to the Indian Civil Service (see his article for the CMG published on 29 June 1887.