Soldiers Three

Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.9

Word count: 482K words
Chapters: 49

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Soldiers Three by Rudyard KiplingAuthor: Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jul 1, 2004

Editor's review

Soldiers Three is a collection of short stories by Kipling set in British India, centering on the army life of three ordinary soldiers and using colloquial dialogue and vivid character portrayal to present the daily life, humor, and cruelty of a colonial army. Its value lies in observing the imperial machine from the perspective of rank-and-file soldiers, with both satire and warmth; the dialogue has a strong rhythm and conveys the narrative appeal of late nineteenth-century English short fiction. Kipling's language bears the marks of its era and dialect coloring, so reading it requires some grounding in English and an awareness of historical context. It suits readers as supplementary reading for understanding Kipling's early style, studying colonial literature, or examining short-story technique. The Gutenberg edition is a free electronic text, convenient for searching and comparative reading, but it contains no modern annotations, so readers may wish to pair it with introductory materials. It is best treated as material for literary history and narrative analysis rather than light entertainment.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in Kipling and literature of the British colonial period
Students studying short-story narrative and techniques of character dialogue
Readers with some English reading ability who want to encounter classic public-domain texts in the original

Not a good fit for

Readers with weak English who find dialect and period language difficult
Readers expecting a full-length novel with a continuous plot and unaccustomed to short-story collections
Readers sensitive to colonial historical context who are unwilling to do background reading

Reading tips

Read one story first to get a feel for the rhythm of the soldiers' dialogue, then decide whether to read the whole collection.
Keep brief notes on the personality differences among the three soldiers while reading; this helps in grasping the narrative focus.
Read alongside public materials on Kipling's life and the background of British India.
When encountering dialect expressions, read through the paragraph first, then return to the key vocabulary.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a short-story collection?

It is a short-story collection; the stories are relatively independent but revolve around the same group of soldier characters, so they can be read separately without having to read from beginning to end in one go.

How difficult is the English?

The original text includes soldiers' colloquial speech, dialect, and nineteenth-century usage, making it moderately to highly difficult overall. It suits readers with some foundation in English reading; beginners may need a dictionary or an annotated edition.

What are the features of the Gutenberg edition?

Gutenberg provides a free electronic text that is easy to download, search, and quote from, but it usually contains no modern scholarly annotations or introduction, so readers need to supplement historical and literary background materials themselves.

Comments

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About the author

Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936 Author

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was a British writer, and this library holds sixty-five of his works. Publicly available material on his life is limited, so the following introduction focuses on his writings. He is known chiefly for fiction and fairy tales, often dealing with animals, the jungle, exotic adventure and youthful growth. His language is vivid, his narrative pace brisk, and his stories combine imagination with moral meaning. The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book, set in the Indian jungle, tell of the boy Mowgli among the animals and have been widely read; Just So Stories explains in a light manner how animals came by their features; Kim portrays growth and the search for identity in an Indian setting; Puck of Pook's Hill draws on history and legend to tell of England's past; and The Man Who Would Be King displays adventure and ambition. His works are often classed as inspirational coming-of-age reading and have had a lasting influence on children's literature and English-language readers.