‘‘Rikki-Tikki-Tavi’’ enjoyed unwavering success as a children’s story well into the early 2000s, by which time it was considered a classic and appeared in numerous editions and anthologies.

Kipling himself was the subject of criticism since he began publishing in his early twenties. His receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1907 was met with wide approval from the general readership with which he was immensely popular and dismay by the literary world. He was perceived by the literary establishment as a writer of verse, rather than of prose; the simple style of much of his prose was considered little more than entertaining; over the decades many found his blunt, straightforward politicizing both unrefined and offensive.

The English poet T. S. Eliot, however, years after Kipling’s death, found value enough in his verse to publish a newly edited collection in 1941; in his introductory essay he defended Kipling’s abilities as a poet. However, by 1941, Britain had faced one world war, was embroiled in another, and its once-powerful empire was crumbling; the unquestioned optimism and belief in the superiority and the romance of imperialism that was so much a part of Victorian-era philosophy was replaced by cynicism and pessimism that characterized the postwar, post-empire era. Kipling’s work was markedly characterized by what became his dated promotion of British imperialism—a theme that appeared even in the children’s story ‘‘Rikki-Tikki-Tavi’’—and by this time the greatest defense Kipling needed was not for his questionable talent, but for the incorrectness of his political views. Eliot attempted a defense by writing: ‘‘Poetry is condemned as ‘political’ when we disagree with the politics; and the majority of readers do not want either imperialism or socialism in verse. But the question is not what is ephemeral, but what is permanent . . . we have therefore to try to find the permanent in Kipling’s verse.’’

Eliot’s defense of Kipling was famously rebutted in 1945 by George Orwell, who called Kipling a ‘‘prophet of British Imperialism’’ and wrote, ‘‘Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting.’’

Throughout the years Kipling himself suffered for expressing the imperialist superiority that marked the mindset of Britain during his time, as did most of his poetry and prose. But there was evidence in the early 2000s of an effort to take a fresh look at Kipling and his work. Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes in Harper’s Magazine that, having the benefit of an objectivity possible after a century of removal from Kipling’s Victorian England, it may be possible ‘‘to start taking [Kipling] seriously as a political writer without embarrassment.’’ He further defends Kipling’s inherent talent: ‘‘Kipling is a truly great writer, whose gross and glaring faults are overwhelmed by his elemental power. . . . Whether or not one likes ‘Kipling and his views,’ he was astoundingly perceptive.’’