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Who2 Biography:

Rudyard Kipling

, Writer

  • Born: 30 December 1865
  • Birthplace: Bombay, India
  • Died: 18 January 1936
  • Best Known As: The author of The Jungle Book

Rudyard Kipling is the author of The Jungle Book and other British-flavored tales of the Indian subcontinent. Kipling was born in India to British parents, but spent much of his childhood at school in England before returning to India in his teens. His collection Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) was full of colorful, dusty, sing-song poems told from the point of view of the common British soldier, including the popular poem "Gunga Din." The Jungle Book (1894) was a collection of fictional stories about the wilds of India, many of them about Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves. It was followed by The Second Jungle Book in 1895 and was the basis for the popular 1967 Disney animated film. At the time Kipling began writing, Queen Victoria still held the title of "Empress of India," and Kipling is known as a romantic imperialist: sympathetic toward the British Empire's foreign subjects and yet proud of the British role in keeping and expanding its empire. Kipling travelled widely and wrote hundreds of essays, poems and stories, continuing to write nearly up to his death in 1936. Among his most popular poems are If ("IF you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you..."), Mandalay ("... An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!"). His 1897 book Captains Courageous was set among the fishing fleets of New England, and Kim (1901) in the Himalayas. Just So Stories (1902) was a collection of whimsical African tales, including "How the Leopard Got His Spots" and "The Elephant's Child." His son John was killed while fighting in World War I, and after the war Kipling published a history of John's regiment, titled The Irish Guards in the Great War (1923). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.

The poem "Gunga Din" includes the famous final line, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!" The poem was expanded into a 1939 feature film, with Cary Grant as a British soldier and Sam Jaffe as Gunga Din... Kipling's 1899 poem The White Man's Burden was the first public use of that phrase... Kipling's two Jungle Book volumes are often published together under the plural title The Jungle Books... Another well-travelled adventure author of Kipling's era was Scotland's Robert Louis Stevenson.

 
 
Biography: Joseph Rudyard Kipling

The British poet and story writer Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was one of the first masters of the short story in English and the first to use Cockney dialect in serious poetry.

Rudyard Kipling's early stories and poems about life in colonial India made him a great favorite with English readers. His support of English imperialism at first contributed to this popularity but caused a reaction against him in the 20th century. Today he is best known for his Jungle Books and Kim, a story of India.

Kipling was born on Dec. 30, 1865, in Bombay, India, where his father was professor of architectural sculpture in the School of Art. In 1871 he was sent to England for his education. In 1878 Rudyard entered the United Services College at "Westward Ho!," a boarding school in Devon. There young "Gigger" endured bullying and harsh discipline but also enjoyed the close friendships, practical jokes, and merry pranks he later recorded in Stalky & Co. (1899). Kipling's closest friend at Westward Ho!, George Beresford, described him as a short, but "cheery, capering, podgy, little fellow" with a thick pair of spectacles over "a broad smile." His eyes were brilliant blue, and over them his heavy black eyebrows moved up and down as he talked. Another close friend was the headmaster, "Crom" Price, who encouraged Kipling's literary ambitions by having him edit the school paper and praising the poems which he wrote for it. When Kipling sent some of these to India, his father had them privately printed as Schoolboy Lyrics (1881), Kipling's first published work.

In 1882 Kipling rejoined his parents in Lahore and became a subeditor for the Civil and Military Gazette. In 1887 he moved to the Allahabad Pioneer, a better paper which gave him greater liberty in his writing. The result was a flood of satiric verses, published as Departmental Ditties in 1886, and over 70 short stories published in 1888 in seven paperback volumes. In style, the stories showed the influence of Edgar Allan Poe, Bret Harte, and Guy de Maupassant; but the subjects were Kipling's own: Anglo-Indian society, which he readily criticized with an acid pen, and the life of the common British soldier and the Indian native, which he portrayed accurately and sympathetically.

Fame in England and America

In 1889 Kipling took a long voyage through China, Japan, and the United States. When he reached London, he found that his stories had preceded him and established him as a brilliant new author. He was readily accepted into the circle of leading writers, including William Ernest Henley, Thomas Hardy, George Saintsbury, and Andrew Lang. For Henley's Scots Observer, he wrote a number of stories and some of his best-remembered poems: "A Ballad of East and West," "Mandalay," and "The English Flag." He also introduced English readers to a "new genre" of serious poems in Cockney dialect: "Danny Deever," "Tommy," "Fuzzy-Wuzzy," and "Gunga Din." Kipling's first novel, The Light That Failed (1891), was unsuccessful. But when his stories were collected as Life's Handicap (1891) and poems as Barrackroom Ballads (1892), Kipling replaced Tennyson as the most popular English author.

In 1892 Kipling married Caroline Balestier. They settled on the Balestier estate near Brattleboro, Vt., and began 4 of the happiest years of Kipling's life, during which he wrote some of his best work - Many Inventions (1893), perhaps his best volume of short stories; The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895), two books of animal fables which attract readers of all ages by illustrating the larger truths of life; The Seven Seas (1896), a new collection of poems in experimental rhythms; and Captains Courageous (1897), a novel-length sea story. These works not only assured Kipling's lasting fame as a serious writer but also made him a rich man.

His Imperialism

In 1897 the Kiplings settled in Rottingdean, a village on the British coast near Brighton. The outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the Boer War in 1899 turned Kipling's attention to colonial affairs. He began to publish a number of solemn poems in standard English in the London Times. The most famous of these, "Recessional" (July 17, 1897), issued a warning to Englishmen to consider their accomplishments in the Diamond Jubilee year of Queen Victoria's reign with humility and awe rather than pride and arrogance. The equally well-known "White Man's Burden" (Feb. 4, 1899) clearly expressed the attitudes toward empire implicit in the stories in The Day's Work (1898) and A Fleet in Being (1898). He referred to less highly developed peoples as "lesser breeds" and considered order, discipline, sacrifice, and humility to be the essential qualities of colonial rulers. These views have been denounced as racist, elitist, and jingoistic. But for Kipling, the term "white man" indicated citizens of the more highly developed nations, whose duty it was to spread law, literacy, and morality throughout the world.

During the Boer War, Kipling spent several months in South Africa, where he raised funds for soldiers' relief and worked on an army newspaper, the Friend. In 1901 Kipling published Kim, the last and most charming of his portrayals of Indian life. But anti-imperialist reaction following the end of the Boer War caused a decline in Kipling's popularity. When he published The Five Nations, a book of South African verse, in 1903, he was attacked in parodies, caricatures, and serious protests as the opponent of a growing spirit of peace and democratic equality. Kipling retired to "Bateman's," a house near Burwash, a secluded village in Essex.

Later Works

Kipling now turned from the wide empire as subject to England itself. In 1902 he published Just So Stories for Little Children. He also issued two books of stories of England's past, intended, like the Jungle Books, for young readers but suitable for adults as well: Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910). But his most significant work was a number of volumes of short stories written in a new style: Traffics and Discoveries (1904), Actions and Reactions (1904), A Diversity of Creatures (1917), Debits and Credits (1926), and Limits and Renewals (1932). These later stories treat more complex, subtle, and somber subjects in a style more compressed, allusive, and elliptical. Consequently, these stories have never been as popular as his earlier work. But modern critics, in reevaluating Kipling, have found a greater power and depth that make them his best work.

In 1907 Kipling became the first English writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. He died on Jan. 18, 1936, and is buried in Westminster Abbey. His autobiography, Something of Myself, was published posthumously in 1937.

Further Reading

The definitive critical biography of Kipling is Charles Edmund Carrington, Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Work (1955), which is excellently developed with extensive quotations from memoirs and from letters to and from Kipling. A number of well-known modern critics have reassessed Kipling as a writer: Edward B. Shanks, Rudyard Kipling: A Study in Literature and Political Ideas (1940); Edmund Wilson, "The Kipling That Nobody Read," in The Wound and the Bow (1941); and T. S. Eliot, "Introduction," in A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1943). Recommended for general historical background are George Malcolm Young, Victorian England: Portrait of an Age (1936; 2d ed. 1960); George Macaulay Trevelyan, British History in the Nineteenth Century, and After, 1782-1919 (1938); and David Thomson, England in the Nineteenth Century, 1815-1914 (1950).

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Joseph Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling.
(click to enlarge)
Rudyard Kipling. (credit: Elliott and Fry)
(born Dec. 30, 1865, Bombay, India — died Jan. 18, 1936, London, Eng.) Indian-born British novelist, short-story writer, and poet. The son of a museum curator, he was reared in England but returned to India as a journalist. He soon became famous for volumes of stories, beginning with Plain Tales from the Hills (1888; including "The Man Who Would Be King"), and later for the poetry collection Barrack-Room Ballads (1892; including "Gunga Din" and "Mandalay"). His poems, often strongly rhythmic, are frequently narrative ballads. During a residence in the U.S., he published a novel, The Light That Failed (1890); the two Jungle Books (1894, 1895), stories of the wild boy Mowgli in the Indian jungle that have become children's classics; the adventure story Captains Courageous (1897); and Kim (1901), one of the great novels of India. He wrote six other volumes of short stories and several other verse collections. His children's books include the famous Just So Stories (1902) and the fairy-tale collection Puck of Pook's Hill (1906). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His extraordinary popularity in his own time declined as his reputation suffered after World War I because of his widespread image as a jingoistic imperialist.

For more information on Joseph Rudyard Kipling, visit Britannica.com.

 
British History: Rudyard Kipling

Kipling, Rudyard (1865-1936). Kipling is often thought of primarily as the trumpet of empire, but his writings were more varied than that suggests and he was far from triumphalist in tone. Kipling was born in Bombay, where his father had a chair in architecture. His first name is derived from Rudyard Lake, near Leek (Staffs.), where his parents had met. After United Services College in Devon, he returned to India as a journalist and rapidly acquired a reputation. At 24 he settled in London. Life's Handicap (1891) launched him as a London figure and he followed with The Jungle Book (1894/5). His poem ‘Recessional’ for the Diamond Jubilee of 1897—‘lest we forget’—made him a national figure. Stalky and Co. (1899) drew on his schooldays and Kim (1901) on India. He published the Just-So Stories, one of the few children's books that children enjoy, in 1902 when he moved into Bateman's in Sussex, and Puck of Pook's Hill, set in the post-Roman period, in 1906. Kipling declined national honours but was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1907. His only son was killed in the Great War in 1915.

 
Fairy Tale Companion: Rudyard Kipling

Kipling, Rudyard (1865–1936), English author, used Puck to introduce the characters from the past in Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910). Two children, Dan and Una, are acting scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream in a fairy ring on Midsummer's Eve, when they find they have conjured up ‘a small, brown, broad‐shouldered, pointy‐eared person’. He is the last of the Old Things who once were pagan gods and then became the People of the Hills; he is contemptuous of the word ‘fairy’—‘little buzz‐flies with butterfly wings and gauze petticoats’. In the succeeding stories he produces for the children people who have lived in their part of Sussex, and in ‘Dymchurch Flit’ tells them how the Reformation frightened the last fairies (‘Pharisees’) out of England.

— Gillian Avery

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Kipling, Rudyard,
1865–1936, English author, b. Bombay (now Mumbai), India. Educated in England, Kipling returned to India in 1882 and worked as an editor on a Lahore paper. His early poems were collected in Departmental Ditties (1886), Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), and other volumes. His first short stories of Anglo-Indian life appeared in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) and Soldiers Three (1888). In 1889 he returned to London, where his novel The Light That Failed (1890) appeared. Kipling's masterful stories and poems interpreted India in all its heat, strife, and ennui. His romantic imperialism and his characterization of the true Englishman as brave, conscientious, and self-reliant did much to enhance his popularity. These views are reflected in such well-known poems as “The White Man's Burden,” “Loot,” “Mandalay,” “Gunga Din,” and Recessional (1897).

In London in 1892, he married Caroline Balestier, an American, and lived in Vermont for four years. There he wrote children's stories, The Jungle Book (1894) and Second Jungle Book (1895), Kim (1901), Just So Stories (1902), and Captains Courageous (1897). Returning to England in 1900, he lived in Sussex, the setting of Puck of Pook's Hill (1906). Other works include Stalky and Co. (1899) and his famous poem “If” (1910). England's first Nobel Prize winner in literature (1907), he is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Bibliography

See his Something of Myself (1937); biographies by J. I. M. Stewart (1966), J. Harrison (1982), H. Ricketts (2000), and D. Gilmour (2002); studies by J. M. S. Tompkins (2d ed. 1965), V. A. Shashane (1973), R. F. Moss (1982), and P. Mallett, ed. (1989).

 
Quotes By: Rudyard Kipling

Quotes:

"Gentleman-rankers out on the spree, damned from here to Eternity."

"Words are the most powerful drugs used by mankind."

"And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, and the epitaph drear: A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."

"Take up the White Man's burden -- send forth the best ye breed -- go, bind your sons to exile to serve your captives need."

"We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse."

"I always prefer to believe the best of everybody -- it saves so much trouble."

See more famous quotes by Rudyard Kipling

 
Wikipedia: Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling Nobel_Prize.png

Rudyard Kipling
Born: December 30 1865(1865--)
Bombay, British India
Died: January 18 1936 (aged 70)
Middlesex Hospital, London, England [1]
Occupation: Short story writer, novelist, poet, Journalist
Nationality: British
Genres: Short story, novel, children's literature, poetry, travel literature

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865January 18, 1936) was an English author and poet, born in Bombay, India, and best known for his works The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), Just So Stories (1902), and Puck of Pook's Hill (1906); his novel, Kim (1901); his poems, including Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), and "If—" (1910); and his many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888) and the collections Life's Handicap (1891), The Day's Work (1898), and Plain Tales from the Hills (1888). He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story";[2] his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best work speaks to a versatile and luminous narrative gift.[3][4]

Kipling was one of the most popular writers in English, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[2] The author Henry James famously said of him: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I have ever known."[2] In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English language writer to receive the prize, and he remains its youngest-ever recipient.[5] Among other honours, he was sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, all of which he rejected.[6]

However, later in life Kipling also came to be seen (in George Orwell's words) as a "prophet of British imperialism."[7] Many saw prejudice and militarism in his works,[8][9] and the resulting controversy about him continued for much of the 20th century.[10][11] According to critic Douglas Kerr: "He is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary and cultural history is far from settled. But as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognized as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with."[12]

Kipling's childhood

Malabar Point, Bombay, 1860s. Oriental and India Office Collection. British Library.
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Malabar Point, Bombay, 1860s. Oriental and India Office Collection. British Library.

Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay, British India, to Alice Kipling (née MacDonald) and (John) Lockwood Kipling. Alice Kipling (one of four remarkable Victorian sisters)[13] was a vivacious woman[14] about whom a future Viceroy of India would say, "Dullness and Mrs. Kipling cannot exist in the same room."[2] Lockwood Kipling, a sculptor and pottery designer, was the principal and professor of architectural sculpture at the newly founded Sir Jamsetji Jejeebhoy School of Art and Industry in Bombay.[14] The couple, who had moved to India earlier that year, had met in courtship two years before at Rudyard Lake in rural Staffordshire, England, and had been so taken by its beauty that they now named their firstborn after it. Kipling's aunt, Georgiana, was married to the painter Edward Burne-Jones and his aunt Agnes was married to the painter Edward Poynter. His most famous relative was his first cousin, Stanley Baldwin, who was Conservative Prime Minister three times in the 1920s and 1930s.

[15] Kipling's birthplace home still stands on the campus of the Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art in Mumbai and for many years was used as the Dean's residence. Mumbai historian Foy Nissen points out however that although the cottage bears a plaque stating that this is the site where Kipling was born the fact of the matter is that the original cottage was pulled down decades ago and a new one built in its place. The wooden bungalow has been empty and locked up for years. [16]

A steamer, Bombay docks, 1870s, with bigger ships farther out in the sea. Oriental and India Office Collection. British Library.
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A steamer, Bombay docks, 1870s, with bigger ships farther out in the sea. Oriental and India Office Collection. British Library.

Of Bombay, Kipling was to write:[17]

Mother of Cities to me,
For I was born in her gate,
Between the palms and the sea,
Where the world-end steamers wait.

According to Bernice M. Murphy:[18]

"Kipling’s parents considered themselves `Anglo-Indians’ (a term used in the 19th century for British citizens living in India) and so too would their son, though he in fact spent the bulk of his life elsewhere. Complex issues of identity and national allegiance would become prominent features in his fiction." Kipling himself was to write about these conflicts as a man of seventy:[19]

In the afternoon heats before we took our sleep, she (the Portuguese ayah, or nanny) or Meeta (the Hindu bearer, or male attendant) would tell us stories and Indian nursery songs all unforgotten, and we were sent into the dining-room after we had been dressed, with the caution ‘Speak English now to Papa and Mamma.’ So one spoke ‘English,’ haltingly translated out of the vernacular idiom that one thought and dreamed in.

Kipling's India: map of British India with locations and years of Kipling's stays.  Click to enlarge.
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Kipling's India: map of British India with locations and years of Kipling's stays. Click to enlarge.

Kipling's days of "strong light and darkness"[19] in Bombay were to end when he was six years old. As was the custom in British India, he and his three-year-old sister, Alice ("Trix"), were taken to England—in their case to Southsea (Portsmouth), to be cared for by a couple that took in children of British nationals living in India. The two children would live with the couple, Captain and Mrs. Holloway, at their house, Lorne Lodge, for the next six years. In his autobiography, written some 65 years later, Kipling would recall this time with horror, and wonder ironically if the combination of cruelty and neglect he experienced there at the hands of Mrs. Holloway might not have hastened the onset of his literary life:[19]

If you cross-examine a child of seven or eight on his day’s doings (specially when he wants to go to sleep) he will contradict himself very satisfactorily. If each contradiction be set down as a lie and retailed at breakfast, life is not easy. I have known a certain amount of bullying, but this was calculated torture—religious as well as scientific. Yet it made me give attention to the lies I soon found it necessary to tell: and this, I presume, is the foundation of literary effort.

James Jacques Tissot.  The Gallery of H.M.S. 'Calcutta' (Portsmouth), 1876.  Kipling, who had sailed with his family from Bombay to Portsmouth on a P&O paddlewheeler four years earlier, however, only remembered "time in a ship with an immense semi-circle blocking all vision on each side of her."[19]
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James Jacques Tissot. The Gallery of H.M.S. 'Calcutta' (Portsmouth), 1876. Kipling, who had sailed with his family from Bombay to Portsmouth on a P&O paddlewheeler four years earlier, however, only remembered "time in a ship with an immense semi-circle blocking all vision on each side of her."[19]

Kipling's sister Trix fared better at Lorne Lodge, Mrs. Holloway apparently hoping that Trix would eventually marry the Holloway son.[20] The two children, however, did have relatives in England they could visit. They spent a month each Christmas with their maternal aunt Georgiana ("Georgy"), and her husband, the artist Edward Burne-Jones, at their house, "The Grange" in Fulham, London, which Kipling was to call "a paradise which I verily believe saved me."[19] In the spring of 1877, Alice Kipling returned from India and removed the children from Lorne Lodge.

Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told any one how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established. Also, badly-treated children have a clear notion of what they are likely to get if they betray the secrets of a prison-house before they are clear of it.[19]

Frederick Gilbert.  1873.  'The Westward Ho! Ladies Golf Club at Bideford, Devon'. Five years later (1878), Kipling was to arrive in Westward Ho! to attend United Services College.
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Frederick Gilbert. 1873. 'The Westward Ho! Ladies Golf Club at Bideford, Devon'. Five years later (1878), Kipling was to arrive in Westward Ho! to attend United Services College.

In January 1878 Kipling was admitted to the United Services College, at Westward Ho!, Devon, a school founded a few years earlier to prepare boys for the armed forces. The school proved rough going for him at first, but later led to firm friendships, and provided the setting for his schoolboy stories Stalky & Co. published many years later.[20] During his time there, Kipling also met and fell in love with Florence Garrard, a fellow boarder with Trix at Southsea (to which Trix had returned). Florence was to become the model for Maisie in Kipling's first novel, The Light that Failed (1891).[20] Towards the end of his stay at the school, it was decided that he lacked the academic ability to get into Oxford University on a scholarship[20] and his parents lacked the wherewithal to finance him;[14] consequently, Lockwood Kipling obtained a job for his son in Lahore (now in Pakistan), where Lockwood was now Principal of the Mayo College of Art[3] and Curator of the Lahore Museum. Kipling was to be assistant editor of a small local newspaper, the Civil & Military Gazette. He sailed for India on 20 September 1882 and arrived in Bombay on 18 October 1882.

Kipling's England: map of England with locations and years of Kipling's stays.  Click to enlarge.
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Kipling's England: map of England with locations and years of Kipling's stays. Click to enlarge.

So, at sixteen years and nine months, but looking four or five years older, and adorned with real whiskers which the scandalised Mother abolished within one hour of beholding, I found myself at Bombay where I was born, moving among sights and smells that made me deliver in the vernacular sentences whose meaning I knew not. Other Indian-born boys have told me how the same thing happened to them.
There were yet three or four days’ rail to Lahore, where my people lived. After these, my English years fell away, nor ever, I think, came back in full strength.[19]

Early travels

George Craddock.  1880s.  Railway Station at Lahore, India.  Kipling arrived at the train station after a four day train journey from Bombay in late October 1882.
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George Craddock. 1880s. Railway Station at Lahore, India. Kipling arrived at the train station after a four day train journey from Bombay in late October 1882.

The Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, which Kipling was to call "my first mistress and most true love,"[19] appeared six days a week throughout the year except for a one-day break each for Christmas and Easter. Kipling was worked hard by the editor, Stephen Wheeler, but his need to write was unstoppable. In 1886, he published his first collection of verse, Departmental Ditties. That year also brought a change of editors at the newspaper. Kay Robinson, the new editor, allowed more creative freedom and Kipling was asked to contribute short stories to the newspaper.[3]

Meanwhile, in the summer of 1883, Kipling had for the first time visited Simla (now Shimla), well-known hill station and summer capital of British India. By then it was established practice for the Viceroy of India and the government to move to Simla for six months and the town became a "centre of power as well as pleasure."[3] Kipling's family became yearly visitors to Simla and Lockwood Kipling was asked to design a fresco in the Christ Church there. Kipling returned to Simla for his annual leave each year from 1885 to 1888, and the town figured prominently in many of the stories Kipling was writing for the Gazette.[3]

My month’s leave at Simla, or whatever Hill Station my people went to, was pure joy—every golden hour counted. It began in heat and discomfort, by rail and road. It ended in the cool evening, with a wood fire in one’s bedroom, and next morn—thirty more of them ahead!—the early cup of tea, the Mother who brought it in, and the long talks of us all together again. One had leisure to work, too, at whatever play-work was in one’s head, and that was usually full.[19]

Simla (now Shimla), India, in 1865.  Simla was a  well-known hill station which Kipling visited every summer from 1885 to 1888.  Christ Church is on the right.
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Simla (now Shimla), India, in 1865. Simla was a well-known hill station which Kipling visited every summer from 1885 to 1888. Christ Church is on the right.

Back in Lahore, some thirty-nine stories appeared in the Gazette between November 1886 and June 1887. Most of these stories were included in Plain Tales from the Hills, Kipling's first prose collection, which was published in Calcutta in January 1888, a month after his 22nd birthday. Kipling's time in Lahore, however, had come to an end. In November 1887, he had been transferred to the Gazette's much larger sister newspaper, The Pioneer, in Allahabad in the United Provinces. His writing, however, continued at a frenetic pace and during the next year, he published six collections of short stories: Soldiers Three, The Story of the Gadsbys, In Black and White, Under the Deodars, The Phantom Rickshaw, and Wee Willie Winkie, containing a total of 41 stories, some quite long. In addition, as The Pioneer's special correspondent in western region of Rajputana, he wrote many sketches that were later collected in Letters of Marque and published in From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel.[3]

Samuel Bourne.  1870.  Railway Bridge across the Jumna at Allahabad. Kipling lived in Allahabad from 1887 to 1889 and likely crossed this bridge numerous times.
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Samuel Bourne. 1870. Railway Bridge across the Jumna at Allahabad. Kipling lived in Allahabad from 1887 to 1889 and likely crossed this bridge numerous times.

In early 1889, The Pioneer relieved Kipling of his charge over a dispute. For his part, Kipling had been increasingly thinking about the future. He sold the rights to his six volumes of stories for £200 and a small royalty, and the Plain Tales for £50; in addition, from The Pioneer, he received six-months' salary in lieu of notice.[19] He decided to use this money to make his way to London, the center of the literary universe in the British Empire.

G. A. Kale.  c.1900. Kipling stayed at this palace in Bundi, Rajputana, as a correspondent for The Pioneer and got inspiration for his book 'Kim' during his stay.
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G. A. Kale. c.1900. Kipling stayed at this palace in Bundi, Rajputana, as a correspondent for The Pioneer and got inspiration for his book 'Kim' during his stay.

On 9 March 1889, Kipling left India, traveling first to San Francisco via Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. He then traveled through the United States writing articles for The Pioneer that too were collected in From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel. Starting his American travels in San Francisco, Kipling journeyed north to Portland, Oregon; on to Seattle, Washington; up into Canada, to Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia; back into the U.S. to Yellowstone National Park; down to Salt Lake City; then east to Omaha, Nebraska and on to Chicago, Illinois; then to Beaver, Pennsylvania on the Ohio River to visit the Hill family; from there he went to Chautauqua with Professor Hill, and later to Niagara, Toronto, Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.[21] In the course of this journey he met with Mark Twain in Elmira, New York, and felt much awed in his presence. Kipling then crossed the Atlantic, and reached Liverpool in October 1889. Soon thereafter, he made his début in the London literary world to great acclaim.[2]

Career as a writer

The building on Villiers Street off the Strand in London where Kipling rented rooms from 1889 to 1891.  A century later, the building was completely renovated and renamed Kipling House.
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The building on Villiers Street off the Strand in London where Kipling rented rooms from 1889 to 1891. A century later, the building was completely renovated and renamed Kipling House.

London

In London, Kipling had a number of stories accepted by various magazine editors. He also found a place to live for the next two years:

Meantime, I had found me quarters in Villiers Street, Strand, which forty-six years ago was primitive and passionate in its habits and population. My rooms were small, not over-clean or well-kept, but from my desk I could look out of my window through the fanlight of Gatti’s Music-Hall entrance, across the street, almost on to its stage. The Charing Cross trains rumbled through my dreams on one side, the boom of the Strand on the other, while, before my windows, Father Thames under the Shot Tower walked up and down with his traffic.

In the next two years, and in short order, he published a novel, The Light That Failed; had a nervous breakdown; and met an American writer and publishing agent, Wolcott Balestier, with whom he collaborated on a novel, The Naulahka (a title he uncharacteristically misspelt; see below).[14] In 1891, on the advice of his doctors, Kipling embarked on another sea voyage visiting South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and once again India. However, he cut short his plans for spending Christmas with his family in India when he heard of Wolcott Balestier's sudden death from typhoid fever, and immediately decided to return to London. Before his return, he had used the telegram to propose to (and be accepted by) Wolcott's sister Caroline (Carrie) Balestier, whom he had met a year earlier, and with whom he had apparently been having an intermittent romance.[14] Meanwhile, late in 1891, his collection of short stories of the British in India, Life's Handicap, was also published in London.

Marriage and honeymoon

On 18 January 1892, Carrie Balestier (aged 29) and Rudyard Kipling (aged 26) were married in London, in the "thick of an influenza epidemic, when the undertakers had run out of black horses and the dead had to be content with brown ones."[19] The wedding was held at All Souls Church, Langham Place and Henry James gave the bride away.

The house Naulakha, in Brattleboro, Vermont, USA as it appears today during the fall.
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The house Naulakha, in Brattleboro, Vermont, USA as it appears today during the fall.

The newlyweds settled upon a honeymoon that would take them first to the United States (including a stop at the Balestier family estate near Brattleboro, Vermont) and then onto Japan.[14] However, when the couple arrived in Yokohama, Japan, they discovered that their bank, The New Oriental Banking Corporation, had failed.

United States

Taking their loss in stride, they returned to the U.S., back to Vermont—Carrie by this time was pregnant with their first child—and rented a small cottage on a farm near Brattleboro for ten dollars a month.

We furnished it with a simplicity that fore-ran the hire-purchase system. We bought, second or third hand, a huge, hot-air stove which we installed in the cellar. We cut generous holes in our thin floors for its eight inch tin pipes (why we were not burned in our beds each week of the winter I never can understand) and we were extraordinarily and self-centredly content.[19]

It was in this cottage, Bliss Cottage, that their first child, Josephine, was born "in three foot of snow on the night of December 29, 1892. Her Mother’s birthday being the 31st and mine the 30th of the same month, we congratulated her on her sense of the fitness of things ..."[19] It was also in this cottage that the first dawnings of the Jungle Books came to Kipling:

My workroom in the Bliss Cottage was seven feet by eight, and from December to April the snow lay level with its window-sill. It chanced that I had written a tale about Indian Forestry work which included a boy who had been brought up by wolves. In the stillness, and suspense, of the winter of ’92 some memory of the Masonic Lions of my childhood’s magazine, and a phrase in Haggard’s Nada the Lily, combined with the echo of this tale. After blocking out the main idea in my head, the pen took charge, and I watched it begin to write stories about Mowgli and animals, which later grew into the Jungle Books.[19]

Cover of the 1894 first edition of The Jungle Book illustrated by Lockwood Kipling.
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Cover of the 1894 first edition of The Jungle Book illustrated by Lockwood Kipling.

With Josephine's arrival, Bliss Cottage was felt to be congested, so eventually the couple bought land—ten acres on a rocky hillside overlooking the Connecticut River—from Carrie's brother Beatty Balestier, and built their own house. Kipling named the house "Naulakha" in honour of Wolcott and of their collaboration, and this time the name was spelled correctly.[14] (Naulakha which means literally "nine lakh (or, nine hundred thousand) rupees", in Hindi, was a name applied to the fabled necklaces worn by queens in North Indian folk-tales;[22] Kipling translated it as a "jewel beyond price"). The house still stands on Kipling Road, three miles north of Brattleboro: a big, secluded, dark-green house, with shingled roof and sides, which Kipling called his "ship", and which brought him "sunshine and a mind at ease."[14]

His seclusion in Vermont, combined with his healthy "sane clean life", made Kipling both inventive and prolific. In the short span of four years, he produced, in addition to the Jungle Books, a collection of short stories (The Day's Work), a novel (Captains Courageous), and a profusion of poetry, including the volume The Seven Seas. The collection of Barrack-Room Ballads, first published individually for the most part in 1890, which contains his poems Mandalay and Gunga Din was issued in March 1892. He especially enjoyed writing the Jungle Books—both masterpieces of imaginative writing—and enjoyed too corresponding with the many children who wrote to him about them.[14]

Rudyard Kipling's America 1892–1896, 1899. Click to enlarge..
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Rudyard Kipling's America 1892–1896, 1899. Click to enlarge..

The writing life in Naulakha was occasionally interrupted by visitors, including his father, who visited soon after his retirement in 1893,[14] and British author Arthur Conan Doyle, who brought his golf-clubs, stayed for two days, and gave Kipling an extended golf lesson.[23][24] Kipling seemed to take to golf, occasionally practising with the local Congregational minister, and even playing with red painted balls when the ground was covered in snow.[24][25] However, the latter game was "not altogether a success because there were no limits to a drive; the ball might skid two miles down the long slope to Connecticut river."[25] From all accounts, Kipling loved the outdoors,[14] not least of whose marvels in Vermont was the turning of the leaves each fall:

A little maple began it, flaming blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a pine-belt. Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp where the sumacs grow. Three days later, the hill-sides as fast as the eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold. Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, till nothing remained but pencil-shadings of bare boughs, and one could see into the most private heart of the woods.[26]

Kipling in his study in Naulakha ca. 1895
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Kipling in his study in Naulakha ca. 1895

In February 1896, the couple's second daughter, Elsie, was born. By this time, according to several biographers, their marital relationship was no longer light-hearted and spontaneous.[27] Although they would always remain loyal to each other, they seemed now to have fallen into set roles.[14] In a letter to a friend who had become engaged around this time, the 29 year old Kipling offered this somber counsel: marriage principally taught "the tougher virtues—such as humility, restraint, order, and forethought."[28]

The Kiplings might have lived out their lives in Vermont, were it not for two incidents—one of global politics, the other of family discord—that hastily ended their time there. By the early 1890s, Great Britain and Venezuela had long been locking horns over a border dispute involving British Guiana. Several times, the U.S. had offered to arbitrate, but in 1895 the new American secretary of state Richard Olney upped the ante by arguing for the American right to arbitrate on grounds of sovereignty on the continent (see the Olney interpretation as an extension of the Monroe Doctrine).[14] This raised hackles in Britain and before long the incident had snowballed into a major Anglo-American crisis, with talk of war on both sides. Although, eventually, the crisis would lead to greater U.S.-British cooperation, at the time, Kipling was bewildered by what he felt was persistent anti-British sentiment in the U.S., especially in the press.[14] He wrote in a letter that it felt like being "aimed at with a decanter across a friendly dinner table."[28] By January 1896, he had decided, according to his official biographer,[25] to end his family's "good wholesome life" in the U.S. and seek their fortunes elsewhere.

Josephine in the loggia, Naulakha, ca. 1895
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Josephine in the loggia, Naulakha, ca. 1895

But the final straw, it seems, was a family dispute. For some time, the relations between Carrie and her brother Beatty Balestier had been strained on account of his drinking and insolvency. In May 1896, an inebriated Beatty ran into Kipling on the street and threatened him with physical harm.[14] The incident led to Beatty's eventual arrest, but in the subsequent hearing, and the resulting publicity, Kipling's privacy was completely destroyed, and left him feeling both miserable and exhausted. In July 1896, a week before the hearing was to resume, the Kiplings hurriedly packed their belongings and left Naulakha, Vermont, and the U.S. for good.[25]

Devon

Back in England, in September 1896, the Kiplings found themselves in Torquay on the coast of Devon, in a hillside home overlooking the sea. Although Kipling didn't much care for his new house, whose feng shui, he claimed, left its occupants feeling dispirited and gloomy, he nevertheless managed to remain productive and socially active.[14] Kipling was now a famous man, and in the previous two or three years, had increasingly been making political pronouncements in his writings. He had also begun work on two poems, Recessional (1897) and The White Man's Burden (1890) which were to create controversy when published. Regarded by some as anthems for enlightened and duty-bound empire-building (that captured the mood of the Victorian age), the poems equally were regarded by others as propaganda for brazenfaced imperialism and its attendant racial attitudes; still others saw irony in the poems and warnings of the perils of empire.[14]

Take up the White Man's burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.[29]

The Torquay Inner Harbour, c. 1890.  The Kiplings lived in Torquay from September 1896 to May 1897, in a house built on a hillside above the cliffs.
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The Torquay Inner Harbour, c. 1890. The Kiplings lived in Torquay from September 1896 to May 1897, in a house built on a hillside above the cliffs.

There was also foreboding in the poems, a sense that all could yet come to naught.[30]

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet.
Lest we forget - lest we forget![31]

A prolific writer—nothing about his work was easily labeled—during his time in Torquay, he also wrote Stalky & Co., a collection of school stories (born of his experience at the United Services College in Westward Ho!) whose juvenile protagonists displayed a know-it-all, cynical outlook on patriotism and authority. According to his family, Kipling enjoyed reading aloud stories from Stalky & Co. to them, and often went into spasms of laughter over his own jokes.[14]

Phillip Burne-Jones.  1891.  The Village Church, Rottingdean.  Kipling and his family lived in Rottingdean, Sussex from 1897 to 1901.
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Phillip Burne-Jones. 1891. The Village Church, Rottingdean. Kipling and his family lived in Rottingdean, Sussex from 1897 to 1901.

In early 1898 Kipling and his family traveled to South Africa for their winter holiday, thus beginning an annual tradition which (excepting the following year) was to last until 1908. With his newly minted reputation as the poet of the Empire, Kipling was warmly received by some of the most powerful politicians of the Cape Colony, including Cecil Rhodes, Sir Alfred Milner, and Leander Starr Jameson. In turn, Kipling cultivated their friendship and came to greatly admire all three men and their politics. The period 1898–1910 was a crucial one in the history of South Africa and included the Second Boer War (1899–1902), the ensuing peace treaty, and the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. Back in England, Kipling wrote poetry in support of the British cause in the Boer War and on his next visit to South Africa in early 1900, he helped start a newspaper, The Friend, for the British troops in Bloemfontein, the newly captured capital of the Orange Free State. Although his journalistic stint was to last only two weeks, it was the first time Kipling would work on a newspaper staff since he left The Pioneer in Allahabad more than ten years earlier.[14]

Kipling began collecting material for another of his children's classics, Just So Stories for Little Children. That work was published in 1902, and another of his enduring works, Kim, first saw the light of day the previous year.

On a visit to America in 1899, Kipling and his eldest daughter Josephine developed pneumonia, from which Josephine eventually died.

Bateman's garden with house in the background.  Rudyard Kipling lived in Bateman's, Burwash, East Sussex from 1902 until his death in 1936
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Bateman's garden with house in the background. Rudyard Kipling lived in Bateman's, Burwash, East Sussex from 1902 until his death in 1936

In the non-fiction realm he also became involved in the debate over the British response to the rise in German naval power, publishing a series of articles in 1898 which were collected as A Fleet in Being.

Peak of his career

The first decade of the 20th century saw Kipling at the height of his popularity. In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The prize citation said: "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author." Nobel prizes had been established in 1901 and Kipling was the first English language recipient. At the award ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, 1907, the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, C.D. af Wirsén, paid rich tributes to both Kipling and three centuries of English literature:[4]

First day cover issued by the Government of Sweden in 1967 honouring the Nobel laureates of 1907 including Kipling. Kipling is shown on the right in the blue stamp and middle row right in the sketches.
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First day cover issued by the Government of Sweden in 1967 honouring the Nobel laureates of 1907 including Kipling. Kipling is shown on the right in the blue stamp and middle row right in the sketches.

The Swedish Academy, in awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature this year to Rudyard Kipling, desires to pay a tribute of homage to the literature of England, so rich in manifold glories, and to the greatest genius in the realm of narrative that that country has produced in our times.

"Book-ending" this achievement was the publication of two connected poetry and story collections: 1906's Puck of Pook's Hill and 1910's Rewards and Fairies. The latter contained the poem "If—". In a 1995 BBC opinion poll, it was voted Britain's favourite poem. This exhortation to self-control and stoicism is arguably Kipling's most famous poem.

Kipling sympathised with the anti-Home Rule stance of Irish Unionists. He was friends with