Traffics and Discoveries (1904) is a collection of short stories, mostly South African or technological in emphasis, and with accompanying poems. ‘The Captive’, ‘A Sahib’s War’, and ‘The Comprehensions of Private Copper’ reproduce the flavour of Kipling’s early stories about the lower ranks in the context of the Boer War. The same knowing narrator who recorded the yarns of Mulvaney and his cronies in India reappears to authenticate the tale told by a Portuguese stowaway in ‘The Bonds of Discipline’. ‘Wireless’ concerns the testing of a Marconi set. While the assembled audience waits for transmission to begin, the consumptive Mr Shaynor, who has just taken some medicine, recites the poems of John Keats (1795–1821), which he has never read. Some regard this to be Kipling at his best. See what you think.
ISBN 978-1842329597