Rudyard Kipling 1865–1936

Abstract

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay but educated in England, at the United Services College. As a journalist in India from 1882 to 1889, he published the stories and poems collected in Departmental Ditties (1886), Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), Soldiers Three (1890) and Wee Willie Winkie (1890). He lived in England from 1889 to 1892 and, with his American wife, in Vermont from 1892 until 1896 when the Kiplings returned to England. Barrack Room Ballads (1892) had made him famous. The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), Just So Stories (1902) and Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) are among the best books ever written for children. Kim (1901) is his masterpiece. Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His wholehearted enthusiasm for the British Empire and an element of swagger in some books have clouded his achievement but his imagination and versatility are beyond dispute.