Reading Kipling’s <i>The Land</i> Through a Lens of Archaeology, Landscape, and English Nationalism

Rudyard Kipling was enchanted by the Sussex landscape surrounding his house, Bateman’s. Many of stories and poems are set in this landscape, draw on its rich history, archaeology, folklore. In paper we examine Kipling’s 1917 poem The Land, which weaves together strands archaeology nationalist origin mythology. Land is story a single field, colonial landowners from Roman Britain to present, generations peasant Hobden family who care for it. examining consider notions Englishness that conjures, their disconnection realities rural Sussex, contexts war revolution, uses creation myth.