Hear and attend and listen Rudyard Kipling is a supreme master of the short story in English and a poet of brilliant gifts His energy and inventiveness poured themselves into every kind of tale from the bleakest of fables to the richest of comedies and he illuminated every aspect of human behaviour of which he was a fascinated and sometimes appalled observer This generous selection of stories and poems first published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series covers the full range of Kiplings career from the youthful volumes that brought him fame as the chronicler of British India to the bittersweet fruits of age and bereavement in the aftermath of the First World War It includes stories such as The Man who would be King Mrs Bathurst and Mary Postgate and poems from BarrackRoom Ballads and other collections In his introduction and notes Daniel Karlin addresses the controversial political engagement of Kiplings art and the sources of its imaginative power