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Rudyard Kipling

RUDYARD KIPLING was born December 30, 1865, in Bombay, where his father, John Lockwood Kipling, artist and author, was professor in the British School of Art. He was educated at the United Services College, Westward Ho, North Devon, scene of the lurid Stalky novel.

At seventeen he was in India once more, a journalist. Before he was twenty-four he had completed "Plain Tales from the Hills" and six more of his best stories, which established his fame throughout the world. In the tales of native life and adventure "beyond the pale" India was revealed anew with a brilliance, color, and passion unsurpassed; Mulvaney and his pals, the exuberant "Soldiers Three," captivated men from sea to sea. Within the next ten years Kipling traveled round the world, married, lived in America, England, and South Africa, and finally became so imbued with imperialism as almost to destroy his art.

His "Barrack Room Ballads" and "Seven Seas" revealed him as an inspiriting poet who "splashed at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair." Of his three novels, "The Light that Failed" is a tale of Suez; "Captains Courageous," of Gloucester fishermen; and "Kim" breathes again the subtle and mysterious fascination of India.

With the "Jungle Books" Kipling enthralled a new audience. These, and the incomparable "Just So Stories," written to his son, who was killed in the war, enshrined him in the hearts of children the world over. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1907.