Rudyard Kipling

1865–1936

English poet and short-story writer of The Jungle Book, seen as an innovator of the form Show bio

Bio

Rudyard Kipling thought and dreamed in the local language as a small child in British India. He was sent to England at five, to a boarding home he called "the House of Desolation." Kipling later suggested that the lies he learned to tell there laid the foundation of his writing.

He returned to India at 16 for a newspaper job his father found him in Lahore. Kipling felt his "English years fell away," and by 1886 the paper was running his short stories.

He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first English-language writer to receive it. Kipling drew much of his work from British India, the land he was sent away from at five.

Book by Rudyard Kipling

  1. The Jungle Book
    1894

    These stories and poems follow Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves, and other animal characters. In one story, the mongoose Rikki-tikki-tavi defends a family's home against cobras.

    3h 41m reading time