Introduction (Just So Stories)

Synopsis

<ul><li> Kipling explains the titular "Just So" or "Just-So" Stories in terms of his first child Effie, for whom they were bedtime stories. She insisted that these be told "just so", without any variation, and they would not put her to sleep otherwise. <li> On the other hand or two, the Blue Skalallatoot stories are "morning stories" and the Orvin Sylvester Woodsey stories are "afternoon stories". </ul>

Notes

• Originally published as the first two paragraphs of the first Just So Stories publication—under heading 'The "Just-So" Stories'; first in a 3-part serial—comprising those two paragraphs and the first story, "How the Whale Got His Tiny Throat".
• Published in a 2016 anthology as "Introduction", with insignificant typographic errors and significant differences in the crucial explanation (quote 2016 with insertions that represent the 1897 original):   "[...] in the evening there were stories meant to put Effie to sleep, and you were not allowed to alter those by one single little word. They had to be told just so; or Effie would wake up take up and put back the missing sentence. So at last they came to be can be like charms, all three of them—the whale tale, the camel tale, and the rhinoceros tale. [...]"   "Now, this is the first tale, and it tells how the whale got his tiny throat: —... (The anthology does not include "How the Whale Got His [Tiny] Throat", nor the camel tale, nor the rhinoceros tale.)
• Effie Kipling died at six years old, about a year after the first three Just So Stories were published. --blog.OUP.com