reflected in his later bullying of the syndicate's representative. The novel also deals with blindness and Dick's slide into despair and helplessness due to the loss of his ability to work and the resulting abandonment by Maisie. Dick sums it up with the statement that "...it is better to remain alone and suffer only the misery of being alone, so long as it is possible to find distraction in daily work. When that resource goes the man is to be pitied and left alone". Publication history The Light That Failed was initially set to be first published by John W. Lovell in New York but it was delayed, allowing for Lippincott's Magazine to publish it first in January 1891. The novel, Kipling's first, was published in four different versions over a period of two years. The Lippincott edition had twelve chapters and a happy ending. However, Kipling had originally written a fifteen-chapter version that ended with Dick's death. Deciding that this would be too sad for public consumption, he changed it to end with the protagonists' engagement. Lippincott paid Kipling $800 for the novel. The fifteen-chapter edition would later be published as a hardback "Standard edition" by MacMillan with a prefatory note that stated: "... The Light That Failed as it was originally conceived by the Writer." It is believed that Kipling's mother had pressed to release the happy ending which Kipling later regretted, leading to the note in the "Standard edition" of the novel. Critical reception The Light That Failed was poorly received by critics in the main. Jad Adams calls the novel richly revealing even though it was badly reviewed, especially its man-loving and misogynistic undercurrents. He calls it "a metaphor for the failing gallantry of 19th-century man confronting the new woman." Andrew Lycett, in his biography of Kipling, called it a "grown-up novel by an emotionally immature man." It has been variously derided as "sentimental, unstructured, melodramatic, chauvinistic, and implausible." Kipling admitted in his autobiography that the novel was a conte (short tale of adventure) and not a built book. Lord Birkenhead calls the novel a "rotten apple" among Kipling's other published works. George Orwell, in an unsigned review of Rudyard Kipling, by Edward Shanks, says, "Curiously enough, he [Shanks] has a very low opinion of that excellent novel The Light That Failed." Adaptations A play by George Fleming, starring Johnston Forbes-Robertson, his wife Gertrude Elliott, and