Joseph Rudyard Kipling

(aged 70)
Middlesex Hospital, London, England
Occupation Short story writer, novelist, poet, journalist
Nationality British
Genres Short

story, novel, children's literature, poetry, travel literature, science fiction
Notable work(s) The Jungle Book, Just So Stories , Kim, If—, Gunga Din
Notable award(s) Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907

poet.


Kipling was born

in Bombay, India. His father was John
Lockwood Kipling, a teacher at the local Jeejeebhoy School of Art,
and his mother was Alice Macdonald. They are said to have met at Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire, England, hence Kipling's name. From the ages of six to twelve young Kipling and his sister spent much time in England with their aunt and uncle , while his parents remained in India.
At the age of 6 he went to boarding school, but Kipling was very unhappy there . He became ill and his mother took him to United Services College at Westward Ho, North Devon. By 1880, he returned to Lahore, (in modern-day Pakistan) India where he began writing as a sub-editor for "The Civil and Military Gazette". He was just seventeen and he began tentative steps into the world of poetry.

30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936

prose collection was published in Calcutta in January 1888, a

month after his 22nd birthday. Later in 1888 he published six collections of short stories, containing a total of 41 stories, some quite long. He sold the rights to his six volumes of stories for £200 and decided to go travelling.
On 9 March 1889, Kipling left India, travelling first to Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. He then travelled through the United States up into Canada. After that he crossed the Atlantic, and reached Liverpool in October 1889. So he made his way to London, the centre of the literary universe in the British Empire. But in 1891, on the advice of his doctors, Kipling made another sea voyage visiting South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and once again India.

The building on Villiers Street off the Strand in London where Kipling rented rooms from 1889 to 1891

Travelling

of an American lawyer and set up house with her

in Vermont, the USA,where they lived for four years.
His first two children, Josephine and Sussex, were born there. When they were little, he told them tales which he made up himself. Later he published these tales in “The Jungle Book “ and “The Second Jungle Book” , and children in many countries like them very much. Many people know his book about Mowgli, a little Indian boy, who lived in the jungle with the wolves.

Naulakha, in Dummerston, Vermont ,
Rudyard Kipling's house, as it looks today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling

"Naulakha"

his “Just so Stories for Little Children” were published. His

fairy-tales from the book were rather unusual for the British literature of that period. One can find the influence of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” in Kipling’s work. But this influence didn’t prevent Kipling from creating absolutely new, unusual fairy-tales. The unusual effect of his tales is reached by the rhythm and the music of words. Those who were lucky to listen to Kipling reading his fairy-tales noted that they always sounded truthful. Besides, not only children but even adults were very fond of “Just so Stories”. Together with “The Jungle Book” it still enjoys great popularity.

writer for children. The Kiplings continued their travelling to South

Africa. During the years of Anglo-Boer War Kipling used to visit the English Army. He celebrated the heroism of British colonial soldiers in India and Burma. R.Kipling shouted 'Hurrah for the Empire!' His novel “Kim” was written under the impressions of the War.

Bundi, Rajputana,
where Kipling was inspired to write Kim.

The Battle of Majuba hill. Anglo Boer War in South Africa.

who travels alone.
Every one is more or less mad

on one point.
The silliest woman can manage a clever man;
but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
Oh East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.
I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew); their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Most amusements only mean trying to win another person's money.
One of the hardest things to realize, especially for a young man, is that our forefathers were living men who really knew something.

Personal Quotes

India to turn Rudyard Kipling house into museum but ignores author.

I, like many other writers, Kipling wrote pamphlets which enthusiastically

supported the UK's Army. But Kipling's only son John died in 1915 at the Battle of Loos. Kipling's son's death inspired his poems about the war, for example his poem "My Boy Jack”. Partly because of this tragedy, Kipling joined Sir Fabian Ware's Imperial War Graves Commission. His chose the most significant of the biblical phrase "Their Name Liveth For Evermore" for the Stones of Remembrance and his suggested the phrase "Known unto God" for the gravestones of unknown soldiers.

in literature given to an author writing in the English

language .Kipling became Lord Rector of St Andrews University in Scotland. Kipling kept writing until the early 1930s, but with much less success than before. He died on 18 January 1936, at the age of 70 . Rudyard Kipling was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and his ashes were buried in Poets' Corner, part of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey, where many distinguished literary people are buried or commemorated.

Rudyard Kipling's grave, Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey.

losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust

yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!

“ If ”