Debits and Credits (book)

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First edition (publ. Doubleday Page) Kipling - Debits and Credits cover.jpg
First edition (publ. Doubleday Page)

Debits and Credits is a 1926 collection of fourteen stories, nineteen poems, and two scenes from a play by Rudyard Kipling, an English writer who wrote extensively about British colonialism in India and Burma. Four of the poems that accompany the stories are whimsically presented as translations from the "Bk. V of Odes" by Horace, but are actually poems by Kipling imitating the style of the Roman poet.

Contents

Contents

Stories

The story of Adam and Eve retold in the style of a Muslim fable
Weekend sailors turned naval officers discuss their patrolling of the coast over dinner
An account of the generous hospitality of a Masonic Lodge in wartime
A tale of school life, in which Stalky & Co discover Uncle Remus and outrage a new master
An old Sussex woman talks about the love of her life and the price she paid for loving him
A still-bewildered old soldier recalls how he came to join a 'secret society' of Jane Austen admirers and gives his own unique take on her oeuvre
A stranded motorist meets an exiled American who explains his passionate objection to Prohibition
A story about an uncannily intelligent bull with a flair for the bullfight
After the war, a soldier reveals the true cause of his "shell-shock"
A tale of school life, in which Stalky & Co bait their English master with the Curiosities of Literature and the Baconian theory
An Australian soldier avenges his friend by waging war on the home front
A fantasy in which St Peter and the administrators of Heaven struggle to cope with the surge of souls from the war
In a mediaeval abbey, an artist shows some doctors an early microscope, which provokes debate
A story about respectability and mother-love

Poems

Play Fragments

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Horace</span> Roman lyric poet (65–8 BC)

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Masefield</span> English poet and writer (1878-1967)

John Edward Masefield was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate from 1930 until 1967. Among his best known works are the children's novels The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, and the poems The Everlasting Mercy and "Sea-Fever".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gaius Maecenas</span> Roman political advisor (d. 8 BCE)

Gaius Cilnius Maecenas was a friend and political advisor to Octavian. He was also an important patron for the new generation of Augustan poets, including both Horace and Virgil. During the reign of Augustus, Maecenas served as a quasi-culture minister to the Roman emperor but in spite of his wealth and power he chose not to enter the Senate, remaining of equestrian rank.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rudyard Kipling</span> English writer and poet (1865–1936)

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.

This is a bibliography of works by Rudyard Kipling, including books, short stories, poems, and collections of his works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Gray</span> English poet and classical scholar (1716–1771)

Thomas Gray was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar, and fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751.

"Dulce et Decorum est" is a poem written by Wilfred Owen during World War I, and published posthumously in 1920. Its Latin title is from a verse written by the Roman poet Horace: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. In English, this means "it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country". The poem is one of Owen's most renowned works; it is known for its horrific imagery and its condemnation of war. It was drafted at Craiglockhart in the first half of October 1917 and later revised, probably at Scarborough, but possibly at Ripon, between January and March 1918. The earliest known manuscript is dated 8 October 1917 and is addressed to the poet's mother, Susan Owen, with the note "Here is a gas poem done yesterday ."

Stalky & Co. is a novel by Rudyard Kipling about adolescent boys at a British boarding school. It is a collection of school stories whose three juvenile protagonists display a know-it-all, cynical outlook on patriotism and authority. It was first published in 1899 after the stories had appeared in magazines during the previous two years. It is set at a school dubbed "the College" or "the Coll.", which is based on the actual United Services College that Kipling attended as a boy.

The Odes are a collection in four books of Latin lyric poems by Horace. The Horatian ode format and style has been emulated since by other poets. Books 1 to 3 were published in 23 BC. A fourth book, consisting of 15 poems, was published in 13 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori</span> Quote from Horaces Odes

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is a line from the Odes (III.2.13) by the Roman lyric poet Horace. The line translates: "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country." The Latin word patria (homeland), literally meaning the country of one's fathers or ancestors, is the source of the French word for a country, patrie, and of the English word "patriot".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barrack-Room Ballads</span> Series of songs and poems by Rudyard Kipling

The Barrack-Room Ballads are a series of songs and poems by Rudyard Kipling, dealing with the late-Victorian British Army and mostly written in a vernacular dialect. The series contains some of Kipling's best-known works, including the poems "Gunga Din", "Tommy", "Mandalay", and "Danny Deever", helping consolidate his early fame as a poet.

<i>Epistles</i> (Horace) Literary work by Horace

The Epistles of Horace were published in two books, in 20 BC and 14 BC, respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danny Deever</span> Poem by Rudyard Kipling

"Danny Deever" is an 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling, one of the first of the Barrack-Room Ballads. It received wide critical and popular acclaim, and is often regarded as one of the most significant pieces of Kipling's early verse. The poem, a ballad, describes the execution of a British soldier in India for murder. His execution is viewed by his regiment, paraded to watch it, and the poem is composed of the comments they exchange as they see him hanged.

<i>Plain Tales from the Hills</i> 1888 collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling

Plain Tales from the Hills is the first collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Out of its 40 stories, "eight-and-twenty", according to Kipling's Preface, were initially published in the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, Punjab, British India between November 1886 and June 1887. "The remaining tales are, more or less, new."

Soldiers Three is a collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. The three soldiers of the title are Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris, who had also appeared previously in the collection Plain Tales from the Hills. The current version, dating from 1899 and more fully titled Soldiers Three and other stories, consists of three sections which each had previously received separate publication in 1888; Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris appear only in the first section, which is also titled Soldiers Three. The books reveal a side of the British Tommy in Afghanistan rarely seen in the Twilight of the British Empire. The soldiers comment on their betters, act the fool, but cut straight to the rawness of war in central Asia as the British began to loosen their Imperial hold.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Gods of the Copybook Headings</span> Poem by Rudyard Kipling

"The Gods of the Copybook Headings" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, characterized by biographer Sir David Gilmour as one of several "ferocious post-war eruptions" of Kipling's souring sentiment concerning the state of Anglo-European society. It was first published in the Sunday Pictorial of London on 26 October 1919. In America, it was published as "The Gods of the Copybook Maxims" in Harper's Magazine in January 1920.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The King's Pilgrimage</span> 1922 book by Rudyard Kipling

"The King's Pilgrimage" is a poem and book about the journey made by King George V in May 1922 to visit the World War I cemeteries and memorials being constructed at the time in France and Belgium by the Imperial War Graves Commission. This journey was part of the wider pilgrimage movement that saw tens of thousands of bereaved relatives from the United Kingdom and the Empire visit the battlefields of the Great War in the years that followed the Armistice. The poem was written by the British author and poet Rudyard Kipling, while the text in the book is attributed to the Australian journalist and author Frank Fox. Aspects of the pilgrimage were also described by Kipling within the short story "The Debt" (1930).

The Kipling Society is a literary society open to everyone interested in the work and life of British author Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). The Kipling Society focuses on Kipling and his place in English Literature, and as such attracts members from all over the world, both general readers and academic researchers.

A Choice of Kipling's Verse, made by T. S. Eliot, with an essay on Rudyard Kipling is a book first published in December 1941. It is in two parts. The first part is an essay by American-born British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), in which he discusses the nature and stature of British poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). The second part consists of Eliot's selection from Kipling's poems.

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