Joseph Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling - was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He
was born in India, which inspired much of his work.

Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), 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

Kipling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was among the United Kingdom's most popular
writers. Henry James said, "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as
distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known." 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 He was also sounded for the British Poet Laureateship and several times for a
knighthood, but declined both. Following his death in 1936, his ashes were interred at Poets'
Corner, part of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey.

Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of
British India, to Alice Kipling (née MacDonald) and John Lockwood Kipling.

Kipling wrote of Bombay:

Mother of Cities to me,

Kipling's days of "strong light and darkness" in Bombay ended when he was five. As was the
custom in British India, he and his three-year-old sister Alice ("Trix") were taken to the United
Kingdom – in their case to Southsea, Portsmouth – to live with a couple who boarded children of
British nationals living abroad.

From 1883 to 1889, Kipling worked in British India for local newspapers such as the Civil and
Military Gazette in Lahore and The Pioneer in Allahabad.The former, which was the newspaper
Kipling was to call his "mistress and most true love," appeared six days a week throughout the
year, except for one-day breaks for Christmas and Easter.

At the beginning of the First World War, like many other writers, Kipling wrote pamphlets and
poems enthusiastically supporting the UK war aims of restoring Belgium, after it had been
occupied by Germany, together with generalised statements that Britain was standing up for the
cause of good.

Kipling's son John was killed in action at the Battle of Loos in September 1915, at age 18. John
had initially wanted to join the Royal Navy, but having had his application turned down after a
failed medical examination due to poor eyesight, he opted to apply for military service as an
army officer. Partly in response to John's death, Kipling joined Sir Fabian Ware's Imperial War
Graves Commission (now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission), the group responsible
for the garden-like British war graves that can be found to this day dotted along the former
Western Front and the other places in the world where British Empire troops lie buried. His main
contributions to the project were his selection of the biblical phrase.
Kipling kept writing until the early 1930s, but at a slower pace and with less success than before.
On the night of 12 January 1936 he suffered a haemorrhage in his small intestine. He underwent
surgery, but died less than a week later on 18 January 1936, at the age of 70 of a perforated
duodenal ulcer. His death had previously been incorrectly announced in a magazine, to which he
wrote, "I've just read that I am dead. Don't forget to delete me from your list of subscribers."

Interesting facts:
--Rudyard Kipling's job at the newspaper ended in 1889 when he was fired over an argument,
and he took his six-month's salary and set sail for England.

--On his voyage to London, England Rudyard toured North America. He met Mark Twain on his
journeys.

--Rudyard and his wife settled in a cottage in Vermont and had a daughter Josephine in 1892.

--Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907. He was the first English
recipient of the award that had been established in 1901

Kipling’s poems and stories were extraordinarily popular in the late 19th and early 20th century,
but after World War I his reputation as a serious writer suffered through his being widely viewed
as a jingoistic imperialist. (His rehabilitation was attempted, however, by T.S. Eliot.) His verse is
indeed vigorous, and in dealing with the lives and colloquial speech of common soldiers and
sailors it broke new ground. Balladry, music hall song, and popular hymnology provide its
unassuming basis; even at its most serious—as in “Recessional” (1897) and similar pieces in
which Kipling addressed himself to his fellow countrymen in times of crisis—the effect is
rhetorical rather than imaginative.But it is otherwise with Kipling’s prose. In the whole sweep of
his adult storytelling, he displays a steadily developing art, from the early volumes of short
stories set in India through the collections Life’s Handicap (1891), Many Inventions (1893), The
Day’s Work (1898), Traffics and Discoveries (1904), Actions and Reactions (1909), Debits and
Credits (1926), and Limits and Renewals (1932)

Kipling seemed to adore his new life, which soon saw the Kiplings welcome their first child, a
daughter named Josephine (born in 1893), and a second daughter, Elsie (born in 1896). A third
child, John, was born in 1897, after the Kiplings had left America. As a writer, too, Kipling
flourished. His work during this time included The Jungle Book (1894), The Naulahka: A Story
of West and East (1892) and The Second Jungle Book (1895), among others. Kipling was
delighted to be around children—a characteristic that was apparent in his writing. His tales
enchanted girls and boys all over the English-speaking world.

Despite the fact that everyone knows Kipling precisely from the “Jungle Book”, there is one
more work thanks to which the older generations still read the author - the novel “Kim”
It was published in the Cassell’s Magazine from January to November 1901. In October of that
year, published as a separate book. Belongs to the typical for Edwardian literature genre of
adventure "story for boys". In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Kim No. 78 on its list of the 100
best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003 the book was listed on the BBC's The
Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novel."

In 2010, the International Astronomical Union approved that a crater on the planet Mercury
should be named after Kipling – one of ten newly discovered impact craters observed by the
MESSENGER spacecraft in 2008–2009. In 2012, an extinct species of crocodile, Goniopholis
kiplingi, was named in his honour "in recognition for his enthusiasm for natural sciences."
More than 50 unpublished poems by Kipling, discovered by the American scholar Thomas
Pinney, were released for the first time in March 2013.

Kipling's writing has strongly influenced that of others. His stories for adults remain in print and
have garnered high praise from writers as different as Poul Anderson, Jorge Luis Borges, and
Randall Jarrell, who wrote, "After you have read Kipling's fifty or seventy-five best stories you
realize that few men have written this many stories of this much merit, and that very few have
written more and better stories."