ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces and assesses Alice Kipling’s journalism for the Season in 1892, when she wrote the social letter column from Simla for the Madras Mail, as she had done for several other newspapers in India since the early 1880s. It focuses on Alice’s Simla, whilst being fully aware that Rudyard Kipling presents Simla in Plain Tales from his perspective: “all the life that fizzes in/The Everlasting Hills”. Alice often cited the precarious nature of the journey to Simla, some 168 miles from Lahore, and the poor roads that had to be traversed via tonga from Kalka over four or five days with all the provisions, clothes and servants necessary for the extended stay. Alice’s interest in the arts also makes itself felt in her visual language. In her writing she paints pictures of life in Simla, as, for example, when she commented on the state of the roads.
