Rewards and Fairies is a book of stories and poems by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1910. It continues Puck of Pook's Hill: two children in Sussex meet Puck, the last of the English fairies, who calls up people from different ages of English history to tell their tales. The book also contains the poem If—.
The frame
Dan and Una live on a farm in Sussex. Puck appears to them and brings them visitors from the past, who tell their stories and then fade from the children's memory.
Each story is framed by poems, some of which became much better known than the tales themselves.
History as storytelling
The visitors include a Neolithic flint-worker, a Saxon, a Tudor shipbuilder, an eighteenth-century doctor and a young American, among others.
Kipling uses them to suggest a long continuity in the English countryside, where the past lies just beneath the present.
If—
The poem If—, which follows the story Brother Square-Toes, is a father's advice to his son about courage, patience and self-control.
It became one of the most popular poems in the English language and has been endlessly quoted, parodied and printed on posters.
Anecdotes
Bateman's
Kipling wrote the Puck books at Bateman's, his house in East Sussex, and the stories are set in the landscape around it. The house is now open to visitors.
A model for If—
Kipling said that If— was inspired by the character of Leander Starr Jameson, leader of an unsuccessful raid in South Africa in 1895-1896.
Frequently asked questions
When was Rewards and Fairies published?
In 1910.
Who is Puck?
The last of the English fairies, who brings the past to life for two children.
Which famous poem does the book contain?
If—.