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If: The Untold Story of Kipling's American Years Hardcover – July 9, 2019

by Christopher Benfey (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 64 ratings
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A New York Times Notable Book of 2019

A unique exploration of the life and work of Rudyard Kipling in Gilded Age America, from a celebrated scholar of American literature

At the turn of the twentieth century, Rudyard Kipling towered over not just English literature but the entire literary world. At the height of his fame in 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming its youngest winner. His influence on major figures—including Freud and William James—was pervasive and profound. But in recent decades Kipling’s reputation has suffered a strange eclipse. Though his body of work still looms large, and his monumental poem “If—” is quoted and referenced by politicians, athletes, and ordinary readers alike, his unabashed imperialist views have come under increased scrutiny. In If, scholar Christopher Benfey brings this fascinating and complex writer to life and, for the first time, gives full attention to Kipling's intense engagement with the United States—a rarely discussed but critical piece of evidence in our understanding of this man and his enduring legacy.
 
Benfey traces the writer’s deep involvement with America over one crucial decade, from 1889 to 1899, when he lived for four years in Brattleboro, Vermont, and sought deliberately to turn himself into a specifically American writer. It was his most prodigious and creative period, as well as his happiest, during which he wrote The Jungle Book and Captains Courageous. Had a family dispute not forced his departure, Kipling almost certainly would have stayed. Leaving was the hardest thing he ever had to do, Kipling said. “There are only two places in the world where I want to live,” he lamented, “Bombay and Brattleboro. And I can’t live in either.”
 
In this fresh examination of Kipling, Benfey hangs a provocative “what if” over Kipling’s American years and maps the imprint Kipling left on his adopted country as well as the imprint the country left on him. If proves there is relevance and magnificence to be found in Kipling’s work.
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  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Press
  4. Publication date
    July 9, 2019
  5. Dimensions
    6.25 x 0.88 x 9.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    073522143X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0735221437
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Benfey eloquently argues not only that Kipling’s engagement with the United States made him the writer he became, but that he lavishly returned the favor. . . Benfey reminds us of our debt to a category-demolishing, globe-striding man who indeed contained multitudes, the author of an immortal ode to equanimity.” — The New York Times Book Review

“Benfey tells it well, catching nuances that some biographers have missed. He argues that Kipling was profoundly altered by his experience of America, and that America, in turn, was altered by its experience of Kipling.” — The New Yorker

“These years were joyous and then dire ones for Kipling, and Mr. Benfey recounts it all with a fine touch.” — The Wall Street Journal 

“[Benfey] draws on correspondence, memoirs and ‘patterns of suggestion and implication’ in poems, essays and stories to assess the impact of Kipling’s decadelong sojourn in the United States on his literary legacy.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Mount Holyoke professor and Amherst resident Christopher Benfey’s focused and illuminating new biography of Kipling, If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years (Penguin), looks at the decade Kipling spent in New England, calling these years “the key creative period in his entire career.” Kipling’s literary luminance was unparalleled (he won the Nobel Prize in 1907 at age 41); but with the rise of post-colonialism, Kipling’s reputation began to shift, and he fell out of favor, understood as 'a jingoist of Bard of Empire, a man on the wrong side of history.' Benfey, whose award-winning A Summer of Hummingbirds (Penguin) looked at the intersection of Dickinson, Twain, Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade, steers his attention here on the ways in which the United States impacted the author, and the ways the author impacted the United States, arguing that Kipling’s influence spanned literature and politics, and altered perceptions of masculinity and the supernatural. Benfey does a masterful job detangling a complex figure.”— Boston Globe
 
“Rudyard Kipling is considered a British literary icon, but between 1889 and 1899, he lived in the United States. His time in America deeply shaped his writing. Kipling’s attitudes toward race and empire have complicated his legacy, but Christopher Benfey points to the continuing relevance of an Englishman who was also a fan of America.”—Christian Science Monitor, “10 Best Books of July”

“An engaging account of the years Rudyard Kipling spent in the United States considers how America shaped him and his work—and how he shaped America.” — BookPage 

“This biography will urge those unfamiliar with Kipling’s works (e.g., If, Kim, The Jungle Book) to read the classics that solidified his reputation here and abroad, earning him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal

“Intelligent and well-researched. . . An accessible and enlightening biography.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Christopher Benfey’s wise and spirited If arrives at just the right moment.  His canny account of Rudyard Kipling’s years in America—when, surprisingly, this exemplar of British empire wrote or conceived his best remembered works—and of Kipling’s long-lasting impact on American political and cultural life resonates powerfully in our vexed and virulent present.  Whether or not you grew up on Kim and The Jungle Book, Benfey skillfully proves in this essential study of imperial influence through the written word, you are living in their long shadow.” —Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast

“This is the tale of how Rudyard Kipling and America changed one another on the brink of the twentieth century. We see the young writer talking shop with his idol, Mark Twain, and debating empire with his friend Teddy Roosevelt. We discover how The Jungle Book  and Just So Stories were nourished in Vermont. The Kipling in If is more complex than we expect, and Christopher Benfey is the perfect guide through the unexpected.”—Kevin Birmingham, author of The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses
 
“Christopher Benfey conjures a life and a period through the canny arrangement of vivid and illuminating perspectives. If: The Untold Story Of Kipling’s American Years gives us that “at last” feeling we get locking in the final pieces of a long-fought jigsaw puzzle. Kipling steps out from behind his official portrait and we are straightaway in the company of a brilliant and conflicted artist.” —Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age
 
“Kipling’s India is familiar to us—but his America? That’s an undiscovered country, or it was until Christopher Benfey found a way to put it on the map, reminding us The Jungle Book was written in Vermont and should stand as an American classic. If shows us Kipling in all the fizz of his early genius, meeting Mark Twain and sitting up late with Theodore Roosevelt: a vivid and beautifully crafted portrait of this always-odd and ever-controversial artist. “ —Michael Gorra, author of Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece

About the Author

Christopher Benfey is Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College. A frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The New York Review of Books, he has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Benfey has written four books about the American Gilded Age including A Summer of Hummingbirds, which won the Christian Gauss Award of Phi Beta Kappa. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Press (July 9, 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 073522143X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735221437
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 0.88 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 64 ratings

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Christopher E. G. Benfey

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
64 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Donald A. Collins
5.0 out of 5 stars HGreat book misjudged by any lesser reviews
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2019
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IF—a book review by Christopher Benfey December 10, 2019

I must admit here that I am a Kipling devotee.
I was captured by several exposures at various stages in my life. For examples, by my mother’s reading to me as a young boy such classics as Rikki-Tikki-Tavi to my afternoon reading of his Barrack-Room Ballads as a young navy officer in the Redwood Library in Newport and then in my 70’s spending a memorable few days at his American home in Brattleboro, Vermont called Naulakha, where his creativity really exploded!

As a result I decided to ignore a negative and grossly unfair review on Amazon of the delightful and successful attempt by the “IF”author to renew proper recognition and obeisance to this amazing and now the unjustly demoted author Rudyard Kipling.

The errant reviewer cited above decried Benfey’s work, claiming he shorted Kipling’s time spent in the USA with descriptions of his foreign experiences. By so stating this critic missed the main point of the book that Kipling fell deeply and permanently in love with the USA a fact fully documented by pages one through page 30 and well beyond!

What more commitment than his decision to marry an American wife?
Well, Benfey’s accounts of RK’s embrace of our famous US writers and poets from those then living like Sam Clemens and Brete Harte or dead poets such as Longfellow and Wadsworth, makes an equal case for his US fealty. Along with his close friendship with Teddy Roosevelt and many other luminaries who sought his company.

His January 18, 1891 hasty marriage in London to the American, Carrie Balestier, soon after one of her brothers died provides insight about his American affections with famous author Henry James “giving
the bride away” to a small audience of non family members. Their wedding trip to Japan ended abruptly when his Japanese bank went bust and wiped out his savings forcing a retreat to Brattleboro Vermont where they had earlier bought 10 acres from Carrie’s brother Beatty.

There soon afterward their daughter Josephine was born!

Urgently working for income, Kipling then started on what became The Jungle Book and his Just So Stories and his famous novel Kim.

Josephine was obviously a touchstone for his inspiration which again makes the case for his American affection.
The rest of this special book’s recitation of his and Carrie’s history I will leave to you. However, my affection for Kipling and my respect for this new scholarship about him is immense! Enjoy a great read!

However, if one needs a proof positive of Kipling’s intense connection of American, page 155 yields this quote, as a vicious dispute with Carrie’s drunkard brother, precipitates their departure from their beloved home in Brattleboro: “There are only two places in the world where I want to live. Bombay and Brattleboro. And I can’t live in either.”
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Eve Waites
5.0 out of 5 stars Very enjoyable read
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2023
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Hurrah to the author, who has refused to submit to cancel-culture. Fun, informative read. RK's American years are nicely captured -- more than an outline, less than a ponderous study. Consumed gleefully in three bursts.
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Peter D. Kinder
5.0 out of 5 stars Kipling's American Years & His Underestimated Influence
Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2022
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As someone brought up on Kipling, I thought I knew the story Christopher Benfey was to tell. But the author's research and knowledge of Kipling's greater context provides surprise after surprise. Prof. Benfey's enthusiasm for his subject he conveys in a light, readable prose. What most amazed me was Kipling's links -- friendships -- with the most important literary figures of his time: Henry James, Mark Twain, Henry Adams.... Other titans, such as Andrew Carnegie and Theodore Roosevelt, were friends and admirers. Vietnam in the US and the end of empire in the UK eliminated him from the canon. Prof. Benfey makes a conclusive argument for a reappraisal.
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Nana and Papa
3.0 out of 5 stars Just so. With a few quibbles.
Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2019
Christopher Benfey's book on Rudyard Kipling's American years is a solid effort to illuminate a period of the author's life that merits deeper examination. He largely achieves that purpose with a concise, readable account of Kipling's years in America, centering on his time in Vermont, but adding necessary biographical background. He also takes a refreshingly balanced approach to Kipling's legacy. The book does have flaws. The assertion that President Rutherford B. Hayes was a native of Brattleboro, Vermont, for example, is an error. Hayes' family was from there, but he himself was born in Ohio. Asserting that Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was the father of George Cabot Lodge (he was his son) is another obvious error that stops the reader cold. Beyond the need for better fact-checking, the book could have used an editor to dissuade the author from making tenuous claims and connections such as linking the death of Wolcott Balestier in Dresden to Kipling's eventual decision to settle in Vermont. A long chain of alleged connections is best seen as simply the vagaries of life. The digressions into the lives of Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt were of interest, but distract too much from the main narrative. More focus on Kipling's work would have made it a better work of literary biography. That said, the author's suggestion that the Teddy Bear might have been accompanied by a stuff animal "called Ruddy Beaver, with Kipling's familiar round-lensed glasses, his unmistakable shaggy eyebrows, and his rounded head" was laugh-aloud funny. Maybe we'll sew one for further laughs. But, bottom line, did the book hold this reader's interest and inspire him to read more Kipling? Yes and yes. Just so. With a few quibbles.
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Top reviews from other countries

willy
5.0 out of 5 stars History
Reviewed in Canada on January 22, 2021
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Very interesting and informative
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John Schofield
5.0 out of 5 stars Good read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2019
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Having the pleasure of staying in Naulahka three times and knowing something of Kipling’s brief time in Vermont, I was drawn as much by the title as the contents of the book. I was not disappointed. Benfey does a nice job in describing the decrease in Kipling’s fame due to his colonial reputation and tries to restore some of that by placing the man squarely in his time. That doesn’t free him from his sins of the past but it does try to place his literary fame back in its appropriate place. I was unaware of the influence of KIM on early US policy in Vietnam Nam. You can’t blame that on Kipling but it is unsettling to read. Sitting at his desk in Naulahka where he wrote some of his best, looking at the volumes of his work and enjoying his marvelous house, I, perhaps, have a greater feeling of the author. Good book. Worth a read if you like Kipling for his literary mastery. Now I need to reread Conrad and listen to Elgar to get my fix of good old fashioned imperialism not this weak kneed stuff being pedaled now.
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Where is it!!
3.0 out of 5 stars Good idea,(five stars) but under-researched (minus two stars)
Reviewed in Canada on April 30, 2023
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Who knew, that Kipling was so influenced by North America! However, the author loses his way; wanders off-topic and uses too much time discussing the Viet-nam war. He leaves too much of Kipling's North American experience untouched. Hopefully the author inspires someone to do a better job.
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