The adventures of an orphaned young man in Victorian England who is given a great deal of money by an unknown benefactor to enable him to live as a gentleman, pursuing a good education and fulfilling great expectations.
First published in 1888, Plain Tales from the Hills was Kipling's first volume of prose fiction. His vignettes of life in British India give vivid insights into Anglo-India at work and play, and into the character of the Indians themselves. Witty, wry, sometimes cynical, these tales with their brevity and concentration of effect are landmarks in the history of the short story as an art-form.