Kipling the Trickster

John Coates, MA (Jesus College, Cambridge), PhD (Exeter), spent two years in the US teaching in colleges and in the UK lectured at the University of Hull until his retirement. He was an acknowledged expert on G. K. Chesterton, having written two books (1983, 2002) and numerous articles on him and given papers at international conferences. His main area of scholarship was late Victorian and Edwardian literature, as his books on Walter Pater (2011) and Rudyard Kipling (1997) affirm, but he had the ability to treat skilfully and sensitively an astonishing range of different writers. His book on Elizabeth Bowen (1998) is an example of this. He published more than a hundred papers in journals such as Shakespeare Survey and Comparative Literature. He died suddenly in January 2020, leaving the manuscript of this book.

• Contents: Knowingness, Practical Jokes and the Use of Superior Knowledge in Kipling’s Short Stories – Approaches to Kipling’s Comic Writing – Kipling and Practical Jokes – «The God from the Machine» – «Private Learoyd’s Story» – «Thrown Away» – «A Bank Fraud» – «Lispeth» – «The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin» – «Watches of the Night» – «Three and – an Extra» – «My Sunday at Home» – The Imminent Peril and Narrow Escape of the Knowing Narrator – The Knowing Narrator: «On the City Wall» – «The Village that Voted the Earth Was Flat» – «Dayspring Mishandled».

«Kipling’s knowingness and enjoyment of hoaxes are often mentioned in discussions of his work, but John Coates provides a thorough, absorbing and illuminating exploration of these aspects and their significance, offering readers what almost amounts to a «new Kipling».»(Professor Harry Ricketts, Victoria University of Wellington)