A Matter of Fact. Artist and engraver: William Strang. 1901. Steel plate etching. A Series of Thirty Illustrations by William Strang, Illustrating Subjects from the Writings of Rudyard Kipling (1901), plate 28. [Click on image to enlarge it.]
This story is a late example of the Victorian obsession with sea-serpents in which a group of journalists observe the death-throes of a creature awoken from the depths. Strang avoids the clichés of how monsters should be depicted, showing them, instead, as human-like; he endows one animal with a masculine profile and moustache (which could be a portrait of either Kipling or himself: likelier the second), and the other with skull-like features.
Image scan, text and formatting by Simon Cooke. You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.
Bibliography
Kipling, Rudyard. A Series of Thirty Etchings by William Strang, Illustrating Subjects from the Writings of Rudyard Kipling. London: Macmillan, 1901.
Created 30 September 2025