The Conundrum of the Workshops

When “The Conundrum of the Workshops” was first published in the magazine The Scots Observer in September 1890, Kipling had been back in London for barely a year. His poems and stories about Anglo-Indian life had already given him overnight fame in England, and his work was in demand. Desiring to expand his range and strengthen his place in the literary establishment, Kipling started writing on other topics and expressing his views about the key issues of the day. The collection in which “The Conundrum” was published, Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses (1892), reflects the twofold nature of Kipling’s work at the time. The poems in the first half of the collection, the Barrack-Room Ballads proper, give voice to ordinary British soldiers in the imperial army. That section of the collection is dedicated “To T. A.,” which stands for Tommy Atkins, a generic term for the infantry soldier that was in common use even before Kipling adopted it. These poems praise the soldier’s virtues while sympathetically acknowledging their flaws and criticizing the civilian double standard by which military victories were glorified but the suffering and sacrifice of individual soldiers were often ignored. Kipling emphasized the human toll exacted by the imperial adventure.