Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling, born December 30, 1865, was a prominent English novelist, poet, journalist, and writer of short stories. In his prime, he stood as one of Britain’s most celebrated writers, winning the Nobel Prize in 1907—the youngest recipient of the prize to date. He is best known for his children’s book duology, The Jungle Book, a story of an Indian boy raised by wolves, and the novel Kim, a coming-of-age story about a young Irish Indian boy and his travels with a Buddhist lama. Both works draw extensively on Kipling’s personal experiences in India, with Kim often regarded as a fictionalized autobiography of Rudyard’s own early life growing up in India under British rule. Born in Bombay in 1865 to Alice and John Kipling, Rudyard spent his formative years on of the J. J School of Art, where his father served as a Professor of Architectural Sculpture. Though the habit would fade upon being sent to study in England at age five, Rudyard recalls thinking and dreaming in Hindu as a young child. At 16, Kipling finally returned India, which he considered a transformative experience. While writing for a series of newspapers, Kipling gradually gained notoriety for his short stories, and by the time he moved to London in 1889, he was already a celebrity. Though Kipling remained in England for the rest of his life, his time in India had a lasting impact on his legacy. Many of his works, including the Jungle Book and Kim, are set in India and feature protagonists struggling with the complexities of mixed identity—a sentiment that resonated with Kipling. His fictional depictions of British India, while rich in detail and scope, are not without bias, however, and Kipling has faced criticism in more recent years for his overly sympathetic portrayals of British colonialism. His controversial poem, “The White Man’s Burden,” which espouses the moral imperative that Europeans nations “civilize” the rest of the world, is perhaps the most blatant example of this. Still, Kipling’s work remains widely popularly and influential today, if as much for its controversy as its literary merit. Kipling died in 1936 in London and is buried in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.