Stalky & Co.
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Stalky & Co. is a book published in 1899 by Rudyard Kipling, about adolescent boys at a British boarding school. It is a collection of linked short stories in format, with some information about the charismatic Stalky character in later life. The character Beetle, one of the main trio, is partly based on Kipling himself.
The stories have elements of revenge, the macabre (dead cats), bullying and violence, and hints about sex, making them far from childish or idealised, unlike the typical school story. The critic Edmund Wilson, in The Wound and the Bow, was both shocked and uncomprehending about them.
Unpublished manuscript
On April 7, 2004, it was reported that an unfinished manuscript belonging to the series had been found. Scylla and Charybdis sees Stalky and his friends catch a colonel cheating at golf. The manuscript was discovered by an archivist at a school in Windsor, Berkshire, Kipling's school being the United Services College in Westward Ho! in Devon.
The Kipling Society's secretary Jeffrey Lewis said the novel was probably left unpublished because Kipling did not think it was good enough. "He started a second draft and didn't complete it," Lewis told the BBC.
Texts of Stalky & Co.
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