Stalky and Co.

by Rudyard Kipling Narrated by Gideon Emery

Overview

Stalky Co. is a book published in 1899 (following serialization in the Windsor Magazine) by Rudyard Kipling, about adolescent boys at a British boarding school. It is a collection of linked short stories in format, with some information about the charismatic Stalky character in later life. The character Beetle, one of the main trio, is partly based on Kipling himself. Stalky is based on Lionel Dunsterville, M'Turk is based on George Charles Beresford, Mr King is based on William Carr Crofts. The school, which is referred to as the College or the Coll. is based on the United Services College in Devon which Kipling attended. The stories have elements of revenge, the macabre (dead cats), bullying and violence, and hints about sex, making them far from childish or idealized, unlike the typical school story. The critic Edmund Wilson, in The Wound and the Bow, was both shocked and uncomprehending about them. For example, Beetle pokes fun at an earlier, more earnest, boys' book, Eric, or, Little by Little, thus flaunting his more worldly outlook.

Editorial Reviews

AUG/SEP 02 - AudioFile

A group of boys in a nineteenth-century British military boarding school has great fun playing pranks on one another, and later preparing for real life in the real military. Rudyard Kipling's classic, according to the introduction, is loosely based on the author's own experience. Shelly Frasier performs the narrative portions in a straightforward, solemn Midwestern dialect, while imparting various British accents to every speaking character. While her accents, in and of themselves, are reasonably accurate, the deepened tone in which they are delivered suggests middle-aged men, rather than schoolboys, and renders students indistinguishable from their teachers. She presents the entire book as a tragedy, rather than the lighthearted comedy it is. R.P.L. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170733286
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	11/13/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

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