Why was his American Notes sparked off to a commotion?
American Notes is I think very much in the tradition of English writing about America, which stood in the British imagination for the potential lawlessness of unbridled democracy. Kipling’s response to America was perhaps as little original as anything in his literary work. His later views of America were of course shaped by two factors: personal ones, mainly his quarrel with his brother-in-law and then the death of Josephine, which made him refuse ever to set foot in the country again; and political ones, beginning with US/British rivalry in the 1890s, and continued by US reluctance to enter the Great War.
