The Hated Wife

Carrie Kipling was one of the most despised women of her generation. Henry James called her “that hard, capable little person.” Rudyard Kipling’s parents saw her as no more than an American on the make. And yet, suspicious and vituperative as she was, Carrie was in many ways misunderstood. It was she who provided the backbone that her husband often preached but privately lacked. Drawing on a vast archive of diaries and letters, Adam Nicolson exposes the malignancy and detachment at the heart of the Kipling marriage. For the first time, Carrie is seen for the woman she was—not as a bully intent on controlling her genius husband, but as a lonely survivor in the face of serial family tragedy.