American Notes

Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)

In American Notes, Rudyard Kipling, the Nobel Prize-winning author of the Jungle Book, visits the USA. As the travel-diary of an Anglo-Indian Imperialist visiting the USA, these American Notes offer an interesting view of America in the 1880s.

Kipling affects a wide-eyed innocence, and expresses astonishment at features of American life that differ from his own, not least the freedom (and attraction) of American women. However, he scorns the political machines that made a mockery of American democracy, and while exhibiting the racist attitudes that made him controversial in the 20th century concludes “It is not good to be a negro in the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

G. A. England of Harvard University (letter to The New York Times 10/11/1902) wrote: “To the American temperament, the gentleman who throws stones while himself living in a glass house cannot fail to be amusing; the more so if, as in Mr Kipling’s case, he appears to be in a state of maiden innocence regarding the structure of his own domicile.”

(Summary by Tim Bulkeley with Quotations from the Gutenberg edition of American Notes and the online version of The New York Times of October 11th 1902.)

Genre(s): Essays & Short Works, Travel & Geography

Language: English

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 00 Introduction Tim Bulkeley (1948-2019)
00:05:15
Play 01 At the Golden Gate Tim Bulkeley (1948-2019)
00:31:43
Play 02 American Politics Tim Bulkeley (1948-2019)
00:27:55
Play 03 American Salmon Tim Bulkeley (1948-2019)
00:22:02
Play 04 The Yellowstone Tim Bulkeley (1948-2019)
00:22:34
Play 05 Chicago Tim Bulkeley (1948-2019)
00:23:14
Play 06 The American Army Tim Bulkeley (1948-2019)
00:11:45
Play 07 America's Defenceless Coasts Tim Bulkeley (1948-2019)
00:23:06