Synopsis

This is a collection of stories (and one poem) in the reprinting of which, Kipling’s hand was forced. He had not intended that these particular items should be republished after their original appearance in the Civil and Military Gazette, the Pioneer and Pioneer Mail, the Week’s News, and the C&MG 'Turnovers' between 1888 and 1890. In 1909, B.W. Dodge and Company of New York published an unauthorised volume of 30 pieces of prose and one of verse (“In Partibus”) under the title Abaft the Funnel. As Professor Pinney noted, there was no need for Dodge to rake through old files; he simply reprinted from the series of 'Turnovers' put out by the C&MG.

This unauthorized volume has the following Preface:

The measure of a man's popularity is not always—or indeed seldom—the measure of his intrinsic worth. So, when the earlier work of any writer is gathered together in more enduring form, catering to the enthusiasm of his readers in his maturer years, there is always a suspicion that the venture is purely a commercial one, without literary justification.

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