(Joseph) Rudyard Kipling


Portrait Born: December 30, 1865, Bombay, India.
Died: January 18, 1936, London, England.
Awarded the Nobel prize in literature, 1907.
Parents: Lockwood and Alice Kipling.

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay on December 30, 1865, in the J. J. School of Arts, of which, his father, Lockwood Kipling, was then head. At the age of six, he was left in a foster home in England. He was extremely unhappy at his foster home, but stayed there until 1878, when he entered a boarding school in England.

His later writings indicate that he was happy at school, where he started writing. He returned to India in 1882 and joined his parents in Lahore where he worked as a journalist with Civil and Military Gazette. In 1887 he joined The Pioneer in Allahabad as an assistant editor and overseas correspondent. Before he went back to England and settled in London in 1889, he had already become famous for his verses and satirical writings such as Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) and Soldiers Three (1892).

By the last decade of the nineteenth century Rudyard Kipling had become enormously successful as a poet and writer, and was seen as a successor to Charles Dickens. He married Caroline Starr Balestier in 1892. His two novels, The Jungle Book (1894-5) have now become widely translated classics. His other novels include Kim (1901) and Just So Stories (1902). He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907.

Rudyard Kipling died on January 18, 1936 in London. He was buried in the Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey. His autobiography Something of Myself appeared in 1937.


Kipling's Poems on the net

Novels available on the net

The Jungle Book (1894-5)

Just So Stories (1902)

Kim (1901)

The Light That Failed

Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)

Indexes of works

Kipling's works in MP3

Movies based on Kipling's works

Other pages on Kipling


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