About Author

 

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer. Kipling was born in Bombay, India. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was principal of the Jeejeebyhoy School of Art, an architect and artist who had come to the colony, writes Charles Cantalupo in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, “to encourage, support, and restore native Indian art against the incursions of British business interests.” 

Kipling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was among the United Kingdom's most popular writers. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, as the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and at 41, its youngest recipient to date. Kipling's works of fiction include the Jungle Book duology (The Jungle Book, 1894; The Second Jungle Book, 1895), Kim (1901), the Just So Stories (1902) and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). His poems include "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (1919), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), and "If—" (1910). He is seen as an innovator in the art of the short story. His children's books are classics; one critic noted "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".

Following his death in 1936, his ashes were interred at Poets' Corner, part of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey.