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The Smith Administration Introduction |
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Notes edited by David Page. |
[March 14th 2011]
Background
Kipling has added a footnote on the first page which reads:
The following are newspaper articles written between 1887 and 1888 for my paper.—R.K.Of this series of eighteen stories, collected in From Sea to Sea, vol.II, only the first six listed below are to do with “Smith” and his household staff.
In November 1887 Kipling was transferred from the Civil and Military Gazette (or CMG for short) in Lahore to the Pioneer in Allahabad.
The Cow-House Jirga  | 4 November 1887 | CMG |
| A Bazar Dhulip | 21 November 1887 | CMG |
| The Hands of Justice | 15 July 1887 | CMG |
| The Serai Cabal | 8 August 1887 | CMG |
| The Story of a King | 17 October 1887 | CMG |
| The Great Census | 9 January 1888 | CMG |
| The Killing of Hatim Tai | 12 May 1888 | CMG |
| A Self-Made Man | 10 May 1888 | CMG |
| The Vengeance of Lal Beg | 3 November 1887 | CMG |
| Hunting a Miracle | 10 October 1887 | CMG |
| The Explanation of Mir Baksh | 1 June 1888 | CMG |
| A Letter from Golam Singh | 10 September 1886 | CMG |
| The Writing of Yakub Khan | 18 January 1888 | Pioneer |
| A King's Ashes | 30 December 1887 | Pioneer |
| The Bride's Progress | 8 February 1888 | Pioneer Mail |
| 'A District at Play' | 27 August 1886 | CMG |
| What it Comes To | 5 November 1888 | CMG |
| The Opinions of Gunner Barnabas | 7 October 1887 | CMG |
Publication History of the Collected Series
In 1891 a volume of this title was published in India but that was immediately suppressed. It contained the same 18 stories now collected in “The Smith Administration”, From Sea to Sea, Volume II, together with two additional stories, neither of which were subsequently collected.
Commentary
The 'Private Services Commission' is referred to in three of the “Smith” stories. In order of publication they are “The Hands of Justice”, “The Serai Cabal”, and “The Great Census”.
Kipling was satirising the Public Services Commission, which was set up in 1886 to look at recruitment to the Indian Civil Service (see this web-site.)
It is worth noting that for this collection of articles, Kipling has inserted the English meaning of the various Indian terms that he uses in the original articles. It has therefore not been thought necessary to define these and subsequent occurrences of the terms in these notes.
[D.P.]
©David Page 2008 All rights reserved