Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

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Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was an English author and poet. His best-known works include the novels and short story collections The Jungle Book (1894), Just So Stories (1902), Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), and Kim (1901), as well as a number of poems such as "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), and "If-" (1910).

Kipling was born in Bombay, India, into an artistic family: his father was a sculptor, pottery designer, and professor of architectural sculpture and two of his aunts were married to painters (Georgiana to Edward Burne-Jones and Agnes to Edward Poynter). At the age of six and he his sister were sent back to England to school, as was common with the children of British colonial India. After six unsatisfactory years with a Mr. and Mrs. Holloway, Rudyard and Trix were taken in by their aunt Georgiana.

Kipling attended the United Services College in Devon and then went to Lahore in what is now Pakistan to become assistant editor of a small newspaper. In addition to editing, Kipling contributed a great many stories to the paper (approximately 39 in one year) and several travel sketches. In 1889 Kipling returned to London via a roundabout eight-month journey that took him to Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, and various cities in the United States and Canada. Upon his arrival in London he began building a reputation as a writer, publishing two novels in two years along with several short stories.

In 1892 Kipling married Carrie Balestier and shortly thereafter the couple moved to the United States, settling in Vermont, where Kipling began writing the Jungle Book stories and produced four novels in four years. In July 1899, despite their pleasant life in Vermont, Kipling decided to return to England and came to Torquay on the Devon coast. Kipling soon earned a reputation as "the poet of the Empire" and when he and his family paid a Christmas visit to the British colonies in South Africa (which became an annual tradition) they were warmly received.

In 1907 Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "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," becoming the first English-language recipient.

After World War I, during which Kipling's only son John was killed, he wrote (1923) a two-volume history of his son's regiment, the Irish Guards, which is considered to be one of the finest examples of regimental history. He also became a "roving correspondent" for the British press. Among his other occupations, in 1922 he developed "The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer" for the University of Toronto, a statement of duties and responsibilities to be recited by graduates in engineering; the ritual is sometimes called the Kipling Ritual and is still in use today. In 1925 he became Lord Rector of St. Andrews University in Scotland, though his writing began to slow somewhat in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Kipling died in 1936 and his ashes were interred in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, in the company of other luminaries of British literature including Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and Alfred Lord Tennyson.

From the guide to the Rudyard Kipling papers, 1883-1967, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)

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Person

Birth 1865-12-30

Death 1936-01-18

Birth 1865

Death 1936

Male

Britons

English

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