Soldiers Three
Soldiers Three is a collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. The three soldiers of the title are Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris, who had also appeared previously in the collection Plain Tales from the Hills. The current version, dating from 1899 and more fully titled Soldiers Three and other stories, consists of three sections which each had previously received separate publication in 1888; Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris appear only in the first section, which is also titled Soldiers Three. The books reveal a side of the British Tommy in Afghanistan rarely seen in the Twilight of the British Empire. The soldiers comment on their betters, act the fool, but cut straight to the rawness of war in central Asia as the British began to loosen their Imperial hold.
Publication history
The first publication of a collection of seven stories called Soldiers Three was as No 1 of A.H. Wheeler & Co.’s Indian Railway Library, a slim volume of 97 pages printed at the “Pioneer” Press, Allahabad in 1888 called Soldiers Three: a collection of stories setting forth certain passages in the lives and adventures of Privates Terence Mulvaney, Stanley Ortheris and John Learoyd, done into type and edited by Rudyard Kipling. In 1899, it became part of the book Soldiers Three and Other Stories, known to most people by the simpler title Soldiers Three. It is this collection whose contents are listed here. To the original Soldiers Three were added nos 2 and 3 of the Indian Railway Library, The Story of the Gadsbys, which is written in dramatic form, and In Black and White, looking more at the native Indians than the British. Both of these were also published in 1888. (The phrase 'Soldiers Three' may be used in writings about Kipling to group the three heroes of this collection: see Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris.)
Soldiers Three (in the Indian Railway Library edition) became the second collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling to be published, after Plain Tales from the Hills (in which the 'Three Soldiers' also appear). Like it, it was collected from some of the fiction he had published in journals; but while Plain Tales was mostly collected from the Civil and Military Gazette, this was "Reprinted in chief from the Week’s news", an Allahabad paper.
Contents
The 1899 edition contains:
Soldiers Three: A Collection of Stories Setting forth certain passages in the lives and adventures of Privates Terence Mulvaney, Stanley Ortheris, and John Learoyd
- "The God from the Machine"
- "Private Learoyd's Story"
- "The Big Drunk Draf'"
- "The Solid Muldoon"
- "With the Main Guard"
- "In the Matter of a Private"
- "Black Jack"
- "Only a Subaltern"
The Story of the Gadsbys: A Tale without a Plot
(first published as no. 2 in the Indian Railway Library: eight 'stories' in dramatic form, with a final poem in four verses)
- "Poor Dear Mamma"
- "The World Without"
- "The Tents of Kedar"
- "With any Amazement"
- "The Garden of Eden"
- "Fatima"
- "The Valley of the Shadow"
- "The Swelling of Jordan"
- "L'Envoi" (a poem)
In Black and White
- "Dray Wara Yow Dee"
- "The Judgement of Dungara"
- "At Howli Thana"
- "Gemini"
- "At Twenty-Two"
- "In Flood Time"
- "The Sending of Dana Dee"
- "On the City Wall"
References
External links
- Media related to Soldiers Three at Wikimedia Commons
- The full text of Soldiers Three at Wikisource
- v
- t
- e
- The Light That Failed (1891)
- The Naulahka: A Story of West and East (co-author, Wolcott Balestier, 1892)
- Captains Courageous (1896)
- Kim (1901)
- Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)
- Soldiers Three (1888)
- The Story of the Gadsbys (1888)
- In Black and White (1888)
- The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales (1888)
- Under the Deodars (1888)
- Wee Willie Winkie and Other Child Stories (1888)
- From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel (1889)
- Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, poetry)
- Many Inventions (1893)
- The Jungle Book (1894)
- "Mowgli's Brothers"
- "Kaa's Hunting"
- "Tiger! Tiger!"
- "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"
- The Second Jungle Book (1895)
- "Letting in the Jungle"
- "Red Dog"
- All the Mowgli Stories (c. 1895)
- The Seven Seas (1896, poetry)
- The Day's Work (1898)
- Stalky & Co. (1899)
- Just So Stories (1902)
- The Five Nations (1903, poetry)
- Puck of Pook's Hill (1906)
- Rewards and Fairies (1910)
- The Fringes of the Fleet (1915, non-fiction)
- Debits and Credits (1926)
- Limits and Renewals (1932)
- Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Definitive Edition (1940)
- A Choice of Kipling's Verse (by T. S. Eliot, 1941)
- "The Absent-Minded Beggar"
- "The Ballad of the 'Clampherdown'"
- "The Ballad of East and West"
- "The Beginnings"
- "The Bell Buoy"
- "The Betrothed"
- "Big Steamers"
- "Boots"
- "Cold Iron"
- "Dane-geld"
- "Danny Deever"
- "A Death-Bed"
- "The Female of the Species"
- "Fuzzy-Wuzzy"
- "Gentleman ranker"
- "The Gods of the Copybook Headings"
- "Gunga Din"
- "Hymn Before Action"
- "If—"
- "In the Neolithic Age"
- "The King's Pilgrimage"
- "The Last of the Light Brigade"
- "The Lowestoft Boat"
- "Mandalay"
- "The Mary Gloster"
- "McAndrew's Hymn"
- "My Boy Jack"
- "Recessional"
- "A Song in Storm"
- "The Sons of Martha"
- "Submarines"
- "The Sweepers"
- "Tommy"
- "Ubique"
- "The White Man's Burden"
- ".007"
- "The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly"
- "Baa Baa, Black Sheep"
- "Bread upon the Waters"
- "The Broken-Link Handicap"
- "The Butterfly that Stamped"
- "Consequences"
- "The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin"
- "Cupid's Arrows"
- "The Devil and the Deep Sea"
- "The Drums of the Fore and Aft"
- "Fairy-Kist"
- "False Dawn"
- "A Germ-Destroyer"
- "His Chance in Life"
- "His Wedded Wife"
- "In the House of Suddhoo"
- "Kidnapped"
- "Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris"
- "Lispeth"
- "The Man Who Would Be King"
- "A Matter of Fact"
- "Miss Youghal's Sais"
- "The Mother Hive"
- "The Other Man"
- "The Rescue of Pluffles"
- "The Ship that Found Herself"
- "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo"
- "The Taking of Lungtungpen"
- "Three and – an Extra"
- "The Three Musketeers"
- "Thrown Away"
- "Toomai of the Elephants"
- "Watches of the Night"
- "Wireless"
- "Yoked with an Unbeliever"
- Bibliography
- Bateman's (house)
- Indian Railway Library
- Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer
- Law of the jungle
- Aerial Board of Control
- My Boy Jack (1997 play)
- Rudyard Kipling: A Remembrance Tale (2006 documentary)
- My Boy Jack (2007 film)
- Caroline Starr Balestier Kipling (wife)
- Elsie Bambridge (daughter)
- John Kipling (son)
- John Lockwood Kipling (father)
- MacDonald sisters (mother's family)
- Stanley Baldwin (cousin)
- Georgiana Burne-Jones (aunt)
- Edward Burne-Jones (uncle)
- Philip Burne-Jones (cousin)
- Edward Poynter (uncle)
- Alfred Baldwin (uncle)