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Kim Classic 20thCentury Penguin Rudyard Kipling Books

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Kim Classic 20thCentury Penguin Rudyard Kipling Books

This is a profound story of love, the search for self, and the resulting spiritual growth of the principal characters. Adventure, and intrigue are laced with humor.The major characters develop through their open hearted commitment to Kim. Don't expect to read it just one time, but prepare to add it to your list of favorites.


Tags : Amazon.com: Kim (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (9780140183528): Rudyard Kipling: Books,Rudyard Kipling,Kim (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin),Penguin Classics,0140183523,People & Places - Middle East,India;Fiction.,Irish;India;Fiction.,Orphans;Fiction.,American English,Children: Young Adult (Gr. 7-9),Classic fiction,Fiction,Fiction Classics,General,India,Irish,Juvenile Fiction,Juvenile Fiction Classics,Juvenile Fiction General,Juvenile Fiction People & Places Middle East,Lamas,Literature - Classics Criticism,Modern fiction,Orphans,Children: Grades 4-6

Kim Classic 20thCentury Penguin Rudyard Kipling Books Reviews

This was at first glance a book about a boy. A very resourceful boy, at that. Who as the story opens shows us that he has conquered the childhood games with his cleverness and recognition of the importance of symbolic acts. He meets the spirit guide of the next stages of his life in the lama. Together they take the "long walk" of the Grand Trunk, an ancient road from Calcutta to Kabul. This river of people becomes a character in the narrative by itself. It sweeps them to their separate visions, the old man lama's of a river where he will be renewed and the boy's search for the red bull in the green field.

Kim is taken into the custody of his father's old regiment, forcing him to realize his status as a sahib. He takes this arrangement in stride partly because he is curious and willing to learn what the whites have to offer but also he knows and proves that he can leave when he wills to. What he learns is the elements and tricks of The Game, a term even in the 19th century for the espionage business.

With the lama who is still searching for his river, Kim travels into the mountains north and west of the Punjab were they encounter rival spies working for the Russians who have a State interest in Afghanistan and India. Both Kim and the lama come to harm; Kim takes responsibility for the old man's health and safety and brings him to a friend's home off the mountains where they both can heal.

Before the story closes, both recognize they have found what they are searching for and found each other too
Kim is a splendid novel by Rudyard Kipling. It's well worth a read.

The problem is that there are a lot of versions of `Kim' available at the store. Lots of them are terrible. A very few are good. Unfortunately, the reviews for Kim are amalgamated into one big group of reviews, and so finding the best one to buy is difficult - near impossible. And so I make this review. Well -- and I do have an edition available for the myself.

Since I first made my review of kindle editions of Kim back in 2010, many new editions of Kim for the have appeared, and many of the old (terrible) ones have vanished from the catalogue.

So I'm updating this review, with information on all the editions of Kim that have appeared since I last updated the review, and I've removed the notes on all those that are no longer available. This review was last updated in April 2013

This review comments on each edition I've found, with a live link to the reviewed edition for the good editions and the honourable mentions. I can't link to all of the editions, because of a limit on the number of product links allowed in a review. However, I have given the ASIN for the other editions.

First, the ones that have a good quality of text and formatting. All of these have proper typographic quotes and dashes, and italic text where they should. They also have reasonable or good paragraph formatting.

Kim (Penguin Modern Classics)
ePenguin
An excellent version of the text. Occasional typos, probably only a few more than in the printed book.
The footnotes are hyperlinked both ways, so they're easy to follow.
This edition also comes with an introductory essay, but opens to that, rather than the start of the actual text of Kim.
This text is based on the revised text of the American 1941 Burwash edition, itself based on the English 1937-1939 Sussex edition. It therefore contains a few American spellings - chiefly of words that that take an 's' in British English and a 'z' in American English.
$2.99 (list $11.49)

Kim (Penguin Classics)
Penguin
A nicely formatted edition with lots of extras. Indeed, so many extras that I can't comment on the text, as the sample doesn't actually get to the text itself. Hopefully based on the same clean text as the ePenguin edition ASIN B002RI9KQ8. No illustrations as far as I can tell.
$2.99 (list $11.49)

Kim (Puffin Classics)
Puffin B004WNA9BQ
A nice introduction by Susan Cooper and the text is well formatted, and seems very clean - it even has the correct u with macron character. There don't seem to be any extras except for the introduction - no annotations, no illustrations. This is a good, plain (if overpriced) edition, but nothing really to recommend it.
$3.96 (list $8.93)

Kim (Vintage Classics)
Vintage Digital
A very clean copy of the text. I only found two definite typo in the sample text (Kutu instead of Kulu, and Oh instead of Ohé). It's also very nicely formatted, with good formatting of chapter starts and paragraphs. Italics, curly quotes and proper dashes, of course. No real extras - a paragraph or two about Kipling is all, really. No illustrations or annotations.
$4.99 (list $13.34)

Kim (Modern Library Classics)
Modern Library
A first line indent and no spacing between paragraphs. But poor formatting fo the chapter starts. It has superscript numbers in the text that refer to a glossary at the end, but the superscripts are not hyperlinked. There is an introduction, and a map illustration. This text is based on the original 1901 version.
$5.99

Kim Illustrated by J. Lockwood Kipling
Durrant Publishing
I believe that this is the cleanest version of the text available, i.e. with the fewest typos. It follows the Sussex edition rather than the American Burwash version as the ePenguin version does. So British spelling throughout. Hyperlinks (both ways) are used for the definitions of foreign and strange words - all of Kipling's definitions and lots more.
The illustrations by Kipling's father are included at appropriate points in the text. There are ten illustrations altogether, and the cover image is a detail from one of them. The illustrations are just (April 2013) been updated to a higher resolution (768x1024)
No essay about the text though. And the Penguin editions have more footnotes, I think.
As you have probably guessed this is my edition!
$0.99

Next, some honourable mentions. These are better than most, but still with various flaws

Kim by Rudyard Kipling - Full Version (Annotated) (Literary Classics Collection)
G Books
Introductory notes and a general timeline of Kipling's era, and a few other extras, but no illustrations. Proper quotes, italics, dashes, but often open quotes are used for closed quotes or apostrophes, and closed quotes for open quotes. The unusual character u with macron is included as an image rather than as a character, and so does not scale with the other letters. Occasional OCR errors (e.g. zero for capital O) and incorrect extra paragraph breaks. The footnotes in the introduction are not hyperlinked. The footnotes/glossary entries in the main text of the book (of which there are a large number) are hyperlinked, with link numbers rather than linking directly from the word. A nicely linked table of contents. The text gives a blank line between each paragraph, as well as indenting the first line, and some of the extras could be formatted a little better.
$2.99

Collins Classics - Kim
HarperPress
This has quite a nice text, although based on an early edition, without the later minor changes that Kipling made. There are some odd errors in it A space in the middle of a word (ador ation), extra characters at the end of a word (trunnionsbu) and occasionally an open quote that should be an apostrophe (``Tis).
Having said that, it does have italics and typographic quotes and proper dashes. It even has the correct u with macron character. Paragraphs all have a first line indent, even the first in a chapter. But the chapter verses and verse in the text is nicely done. According to the table of contents, it has some extras at the end, but no illustrations, and no extra annotations that I could see. Not too bad an edition, if it wasn't for the weird typos.
$0.99

Kim (Dover Thrift Editions)
Dover Publications
A brief introductory note, but no illustrations. Proper quotes, italics, dashes. The unusual character u with macron is included as an image rather than as a character, and so does not scale with the other letters. No extra annotations. A nicely linked table of contents. The text gives a small space between each paragraph, as well as indenting the first line. The verse formatting is quite good.
$2.99

And now for all the others. Since I first wrote this review, has, thankfully, deleted many of these editions. But, alas, several more have been added. For all these, I downloaded the sample, and compared against both a printed copy and my edition. Not that it usually took very long. While there are variations among them, they're almost all quick conversions of whatever was the latest text at Project Gutenberg when the book was made. I can't recommend any of these versions, not even the free ones. You'd be much better off getting the nice free version at Mobileread.

KIM (Annotated and Illustrated with full author biography and related pictures)
ASIN B006R1T3AE
Publisher No publisher given.
No Italics. Straight quotes. Large gaps between paragraphs. u instead of '. Older version of the text, with some typos (dried for fried, for example).
It does have a little bit of biographical and other info at the front.

Kim [Annotated]
ASIN B000FC1D36
Publisher Neeland Media LLC
No italics. No accents. Straight quotes. Dashes are hyphens. A first line indent and no space between paragraphs. No illustrations or annotations that I could see in the sample. There is an introduction.

Kim
ASIN B00ABDHYXW
Publisher Start Publishing LLC
No italics. No accents. But curly quotes and em-dashes. A first line indent and no space between paragraphs. No illustrations or annotations that I could see in the sample. The usual errors in the text (pincers for pencase, etc.).

Kim
ASIN B00865NF12
Publisher Neelkanth Prakashan
No italics. No accents. But curly quotes and em-dashes. A first line indent and no space between paragraphs. No illustrations or annotations that I could see in the sample. The usual errors in the text (pincers for pencase, etc.).

Kim (Illustrated)
ASIN B0083I7XWY
Publisher No Publisher Given
No italics. No accents. Straight quotes. Dashes are hyphens. A first line indent and some space between paragraphs. Illustrations at the start of each chapter. No extra annotations that I could see in the sample. The usual errors in the text (pincers for pencase, etc.).

Kim (Annotated Edition)
ASIN B00AV0GJBI
Publisher No Publisher Given
No italics in main text. No accents. Curly quotes. Proper dashes. A first line indent but also a full line space space between paragraphs. No illustrations. No annotations that I could see in the sample. The usual errors in the text (pincers for pencase, etc.).
I read Christopher Hitchens's review of Rudyard Kipling in his book Love, Poverty, and War Journeys and Essays, and I decided to go to the source. Kipling's portrayal of the characters are entirely multi-dimensional, making them relatable in our commonality but we can fully understand their intentions with the character development we are provided. The dialogue, if one is unfamiliar with the dialect, slang, and 19th century British English, can be difficult to follow upon first passing, but the story-line is very easy to follow. I would not compare this to contemporary literature as it is simply too different to the current literary style, different literary objectives and exposition, and very different contemporary (19th century Indian-British English) dialogue. However, if you want to get an understanding of Rudyard Kipling's writing, if you want to see the relationship as described by a contemporary of the Indian colony and its colonizers, or simply want to enjoy a well written story from late 19th century British literature, this book will not disappoint.
This is a profound story of love, the search for self, and the resulting spiritual growth of the principal characters. Adventure, and intrigue are laced with humor.The major characters develop through their open hearted commitment to Kim. Don't expect to read it just one time, but prepare to add it to your list of favorites.