O Beloved Kids: Rudyard Kipling's Letters to His Children

Displaying the same verve and wit as the Just So Stories, this charming collection brings together the series of letters Rudyard Kipling wrote to his children—his "dear people" as he called them—from 1906 to 1915. The correspondence with each child is eloquently presented—for Josephine, his daughter, who died at the age of six, the grief of whose loss almost stopped him from continuing with the stories; for his son John, who would become a young officer and be lost in the trenches of World War I, his father never forgiving himself afterwards for having pushed him into the service; and for his second daughter, Elsie, who would marry but had no children of her own. The letters are peppered with many impromptu pen and ink sketches, stories, and poems, as well as brilliantly graphic descriptions of travel in Europe, Egypt, and Canada.