First published as No. 6 in the Indian Railway Library as Wee Willie Winkie and Other Child Stories in 1889 and collected in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories in 1895, and in numerous subsequent reprints of that collection. An untried British regim…

On the night before a British military parade for the Amir of Afghanistan, the army's working animals – mule, camel, horse, bullock, elephant – discuss what they do in battle and how they feel about their work. It is explained to the Afghans tha…

"The Man Who Would Be King" (1888) is a story by Rudyard Kipling about two British adventurers in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan. The story was first published in The Phantom Rickshaw and other Eerie T…

"The Finest Story in the World" is an short story by Rudyard Kipling: This story was first published in the Contemporary Review of July 1891. It includes the poem «Song of the Galley-slaves». The narrator meets a young bank clerk, Charlie Mears,…

First published in Harper's Magazine on 23 August 1890 and in Macmillan's Magazine in the following month; appeared with The Courting of Dinah Shadd and Other Stories in 1890, was collected in Mine Own People and Life's Handicap in 189…

"Wressley of the Foreign Office" is an short story by Rudyard Kipling: One of the many curses of our life out here is the want of atmosphere in the painter's sense. There are no half-tints worth noticing. Men stand out all crude and raw, wi…

First published in the Civil and Military Gazette on 10 January 1887, and collected in Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in successive later editions of this collection. This story is well summarised by Norman Page, in «A Kipling Companion». «A…