(Joseph) Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay, India. He was educated at the United Services College, Westward Ho!, in England, returning to India in 1882, where he worked for Anglo-Indian newspapers. In 1889, he left India, travelling extensively before permanently settling in England. His literary career began with Departmental Ditties (1886) and he achieved international success with works such as Jungle Book (1894), Stalky and Co. (1899), Just So Stories for Little Children (1902) and Kim (1901). In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and received numerous honours throughout his life, including the gold medal of the Royal Society for Literature in 1926. An unfinished autobiography, Something of Myself, was published posthumously in 1937. He died after an operation in London on 18 January 1936.
From the guide to the Rudyard Kipling collection, 1914, (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)
