Captains Courageous - Rudyard Kipling

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Résumé :
First published in 1897, Captains Courageous follows the adventures of Harvey Cheyne, a spoiled, rich young man who is accidentally washed overboard from a luxury ocean liner and is rescued by the Portuguese captain of a fishing boat and his hard scrabble crew. Kipling, drawing on his own experiences living in Vermont, fills this classic coming of age story with period details of late nineteenth-century American fishing, whaling, and railroad travel. Forced to work for his place on the ship, fifteen-year-old Harvey must overcome his own stubbornness and privileged up-bringing as he learns to survive, and even thrive, in the harsh, demanding, and often dangerous life at sea. Through hard work and discipline, Harvey learns the values of self-reliance and friendship as he becomes a skilled fisherman and an accepted and equal member of the crew. The novel is both a thrilling test of Harvey's character and an examination of class and privilege in nineteenth-century America. Exhilarating and ultimately redemptive, the novel was heralded by Theodore Roosevelt in his 1900 essay What We Can Expect of the American Boy as describing in the liveliest way just what a boy should be and do. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Biographie:
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet and novelist. Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901) and many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King (1888). His poems include Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), The Gods of the Copybook Headings (1919), The White Man's Burden (1899) and If- (1910). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature and one critic described his work as exhibiting a versatile and luminous narrative gift. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known. In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined.