Barrack-Room Ballads

Barrack-Room Ballads, collected poems by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1892 and subsequently republished in expanded form. Included were such well-known previously published verses as “Danny Deever,” “Gunga Din,” and “Mandalay.” The book was a popular success and made Kipling a power among contemporary poets.

Many of the poems are rendered in a Cockney dialect. They all concern the British enlisted man, the soldier who defends the British Empire but is scorned because of his low birth.