Thursday, May 30, 2013

Rudyard Kipling - Plagiarist?


Indeed.

From a piece in the Los Angeles Times...

Addressed to an unidentified woman, the short letter, which is signed by Kipling, reads...

"I have been absent from home for some days. Hence the delay in answering yours of no date, in regard to my account of the Law of the Jungle.

"I am afraid that all that code in its outlines has been manufactured to meet 'the necessities of the case': though a little of it is bodily taken from (Southern) Esquimaux rules for the division of spoils.

"In fact, it is extremely possible that I have helped myself promiscuously but at present cannot remember from whose stories I have stolen."

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