Dear All
I have received the following request from Dr Kate Macdonald of the University of Ghent.
"I'm writing a lecture on 'The Village That Voted The Earth Was Flat',
and am having difficulty finding anything written on that story, that
I can mine for ideas. Could you send out an email on the Kipling list
to ask for help?"
I have suggested the following sources:
The Harbord Readers' Guide entry is in KJ215 for September 1970. Also KJ021 (March 1932) has some comment. There have been many other mentions of the story over the years in the KJ, usually in relation to his other revenge/retribution stories.
J.M.S. Tompkins has a few comments in The Art of Rudyard Kipling on the story and the whole collection, A Diversity of Creatures, as does Bonamy Dobrée in Rudyard Kipling, Realist and Fabulist. Eliot Gilbert in The Good Kipling is a little harsher in his judgement. More recently (2007) Jan Montefiore in her Rudyard Kipling does devote a few sentences to the story drawing attention to the connections between political influence and jouralism. Peter Havholm in his (2008) Politics and Awe in Rudyard Kipling's Fiction draws the revenge parallel with "Mary Postgate" whereas most of the earlier writers have looked to "Beauty Spots".
Yours, David