How is Rudyard Kipling connected to The Blue Pendant?

Rudyard Kipling

The Blue Pendant, historical fiction, connected Anna, the protagonist, to India through her uncle. Author, Rudyard Kipling, connected to India through birth. His Parents, Alice and John Lockwood Kipling spent their courtship at Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire, England, which explains Rudyard’s unusual name. After they married they moved to British India, where his father was Principal and Professor of Architectural Sculpture at Sir Jamseetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art in Bombay. Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865.

At five years old, Kipling was taken to England to board with a couple in Portsmouth, while he attended primary school, until old enough for boarding school. Reflecting on his childhood, Kipling wondered if his early interest in writing, which later developed into a literary life, might have been his way of coping with the abuse and neglect he suffered in Portsmouth.

The mid to late 19th century was the height of the the Victorian British Empire and it was normal for parents, working overseas in the British Empire, to send young children home to be educated.  I can’t imagine sending my children away, at any age, let alone at five years old.

In his adult years, Kipling travelled and lived in India and England. After marrying Carrie Balestier, an American, they lived in Vermont until political concerns prompted the family to move. After much traveling, they settled down in 1902 at a place called Burwash Sussex. Here they raised two of three children; Josephine their oldest daughter had died in1899 at the age of six. Kipling stayed in that house until his death in 1936.

I know this is a slim connection and perhaps a mere coincidence, but the first part of the The Blue Pendant is also set in Sussex, albeit a few miles away at Bexhill-on-Sea.

No matter where they lived, Kipling was a prolific writer and subsequently became one of the most famous authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  He wrote for children and adults alike. The Jungle Book is a household name, even today, but he also wrote poems, short stories that were very popular in Victorian times, as well as novellas and novels. Many of his stories were of India, which is perhaps why he was Anna’s favorite author. Several of his titles are mentioned in The Blue Pendant.

The connection goes a little deeper when Anna sympathizes with Kipling’s struggle and early denial, of his son’s death in the Great War.

Rudyard Kipling was a fascinating man and author, for more details go to Wikipedia or read his biography. The original biography called, Rudyard Kipling written by John Palmer in 1923 has been restored and is available from Chapters/Indigo or select from the many other versions available in paperback or eBooks, at any on line book retailer.

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British India, Chapters/Indigo, historical fiction, Rudyard Kipling, Rudyard Lake