Kipling, “Mandalay” and Burma in the Popular Imagination

Selth, Andrew

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Kipling, “Mandalay” and Burma in the Popular Imagination

Date

2016

Authors

Selth, Andrew

Publisher

Southeast Asia Publications

Abstract

It is difficult to overestimate the impact on popular perceptions of Burma—indeed, of the “Far East” more generally—of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Mandalay”. It first appeared in the literary weekly The Scots Observer on 21 June 1890. It was subsequently included in the collection Barrack Room Ballads and Other Verses, which was published in London in 1892.