Category: Image, English, India, Connecticut
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For the last decade of the nineteenth century and at least the first two decades of the twentieth, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was one of the most popular writers in the English language, in both prose and verse. He was among the last British poets to command a mass audience, appealing to readers of all social classes and ages. Although his few novels, except Kim , were only a mixed success, in the medium of the short story Kipling extended the range of English fiction in both subject matter and technique and perhaps did more than any other author in the English language to blur the division between popular and high art. Rudyard Kipling: The Books I Leave Behind , an exhibition held in 2007, was the first comprehensive show to be presented anywhere in over fifty years.
This illustrated manuscript made in southern India in 1837 consists of 72 full-color hand-painted images of men and women of the various castes and religious and ethnic groups found in Madura, India at that time. Each drawing was made on mica, a transparent, flaky mineral which splits into thin, transparent sheets. As indicated on the presentation page, the album was compiled by the Indian writing master at an English school established by American missionaries in Madura, and given to the Reverend William Twining. The manuscript shows Indian dress and jewelry adornment in the Madura region as they appeared before the onset of Western influences on South Asian dress and style.
