The history of colonial period literature in india
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It was the enormous psychological impact of the Indian Mutiny that forced the British public to reassess its somewhat patronizing and optimistic view of foreign cultures and race relations, and stimulated a renewed and perhaps more mature interest in India. The novels and short stories of Sir Henry Cunningham and Philip Robinson attained a measure of popularity in the 1870's, and 1888 saw the publication of Rudyard Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills. Born in Bombay, Kipling was sent to England at the age of six, there to endure a lonely and traumatic education before returning once more to India and obtaining employment as a journalist. His sketches of Anglo-Indian life first appeared in English-language newspapers such as the Civil and Military Gazette, and collections of his stories delighted patrons of Wheeler's Indian Railway Library, a series of cheap paperback books sold at most railway stations, and designed to help weary travelers overcome the tedium of long train journeys across the Indian sub-continent. Although primarily written for domestic consumption, Kipling's stories began to attract attention in England, and in 1889 he made the difficult decision to leave India and try to establish himself in the literary circles of London. By the end of the century he had become one of Britain's greatest literary figures. His abhorrence of political involvement led him to refuse a knighthood and many other honors bestowed upon him, but he did agree to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. During his lifetime, Kipling's popular appeal, and his awesome status as the nation's defacto poet laureate, made him the object of much scornful criticism, particularly from the rising generation of iconoclastic 'decadent' writers.