ABSTRACT
KIPLING was the first major English writer to deal extensively and seriously with the British colonies, and he virtually invented the genre of colonial fiction. An immensely productive author, he had already published seven volumes of stories and poems when he sailed for England at the age of 24 in 1889, and like the young Goethe and Byron, became famous overnight. He soon became the most popular and influential author of the age, and during his lifetime more than fifteen million copies of his books were sold in England and America. Thus, Kipling’s idea of India and the Indians was the one that overwhelmingly prevailed until 1924, when A Passage to India was published, and well beyond. According to Thornton, “the imperial principle, animating an imperial code, remained the dynamic in the thought and action of the governing classes of England until after the close of the twentieth century’s second world war”. 1
