The poems collected here are mostly light verse—“barrack-room ballads,” Kipling called them—inspired by Kipling’s early adventures as a newspaperman in British colonial India. The first book Kipling published, Departmental Ditties (1886), emphasizes the universality of human experience and the cross-cultural ubiquity of the ignoble and tragicomic aspects of human character.
The poems collected here are mostly light verse—“barrack-room ballads,” Kipling called them—inspired by Kipling’s early adventures as a newspaperman in British colonial India. The first book Kipling published, Departmental Ditties (1886), emphasizes the universality of human experience and the cross-cultural ubiquity of the ignoble and tragicomic aspects of human character.
Barnes & Noble is the world’s largest retail bookseller and a leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products. Our Nook Digital business offers a lineup of NOOK® tablets and e-Readers and an expansive collection of digital reading content through the NOOK Store®. Barnes & Noble’s mission is to operate the best omni-channel specialty retail business in America, helping both our customers and booksellers reach their aspirations, while being a credit to the communities we serve.
