***The three boys are all destined for eccentric greatness when they grow up. Most of them were being prepared to become Subalterns in the army. *** United Services College was an almost brand new prep school whose students were mainly born abroad of parents serving Queen Victoria's Empire, especially in India and Burma. We focus on Stalky, M'Turk and Beetle in their last two years of school, when they are 15 and 16 years old. Down the years Kipling would write more of their adventures. *** STALKY & CO (1899) is a hugely successful fictional re-creation of Rudyard Kipling's half dozen years as a boarder at the United Services College on the seacoast of North Devon at Westward Ho! In the novel, Kipling is "Beetle," a disheveled, near-sighted poet, editor of the school newspaper, one of three inseparables which includes Irish aristocrat M'Turk and team leader Stalky. Academic and literary careers have been built on tracing Kipling's "originals." One way to look at Kipling's fiction: there is always a lot more Rudyard in it than you might suspect. Kipling's men and boys in KIM, THE JUNGLE BOOKS, MULVANEY STORIES and other narratives were based on living three-dimensional people whom he had met, interacted with or whose real-life stories others had told him. By contrast with the Prague writer, Kipling's narrative genius did not consist in making up characters whole cloth from a vivid imagination.
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