More than 50 unpublished poems by India-born British writer Rudyard Kipling have been discovered and will be edited in a brief book collecting all his lyric work.
The manuscripts were discovered in a number of places including a Manhattan House that was being renovated and among the papers of a former head of the Cunard Line by US scholar Thomas Pinney.
Kipling fans are celebrating the publication of lost poems by the author and Pinney described it as a ‘tremendously exciting time for scholars and fans,’ BBC News reported.
The poems will be published alongside 1,300 others in the first ever complete edition of Kipling's verse on 7 March.
Kipling, who lived from 1865 to 1936, was best known for his fictional short stories including 'The Jungle Book' and poems 'Mandalay' and 'If'.
The newly discovered poems include several from World War I, including one titled ‘Never Again In Any Port’, as well as notes from a journal the writer kept on a tour of the war graves of Belgium and France in 1924.
‘Kipling has long been neglected by scholars probably for political reasons. His texts have never properly been studied but things are starting to change,’ Pinney, a professor of English at the University of California, said.
‘There is a treasure trove of uncollected, unpublished and unidentified work out there. I discovered another unrecorded item only recently and that sort of thing will keep happening,’ said Pinney.
One of the poems titled ‘The Press’ from 1899 comprises a diatribe against media intrusion, the report said. There was also Kipling's comic verse, including an example written on a ship sailing from Adelaide to Ceylon, Sri Lanka.‘He wrote much else to entertain, engage and challenge readers,’ Linda Bree, editorial director at Cambridge University Press, said.
The manuscripts were discovered in a number of places including a Manhattan House that was being renovated and among the papers of a former head of the Cunard Line by US scholar Thomas Pinney.
Kipling fans are celebrating the publication of lost poems by the author and Pinney described it as a ‘tremendously exciting time for scholars and fans,’ BBC News reported.
The poems will be published alongside 1,300 others in the first ever complete edition of Kipling's verse on 7 March.
Kipling, who lived from 1865 to 1936, was best known for his fictional short stories including 'The Jungle Book' and poems 'Mandalay' and 'If'.
The newly discovered poems include several from World War I, including one titled ‘Never Again In Any Port’, as well as notes from a journal the writer kept on a tour of the war graves of Belgium and France in 1924.
‘Kipling has long been neglected by scholars probably for political reasons. His texts have never properly been studied but things are starting to change,’ Pinney, a professor of English at the University of California, said.
‘There is a treasure trove of uncollected, unpublished and unidentified work out there. I discovered another unrecorded item only recently and that sort of thing will keep happening,’ said Pinney.
One of the poems titled ‘The Press’ from 1899 comprises a diatribe against media intrusion, the report said. There was also Kipling's comic verse, including an example written on a ship sailing from Adelaide to Ceylon, Sri Lanka.‘He wrote much else to entertain, engage and challenge readers,’ Linda Bree, editorial director at Cambridge University Press, said.