Historical Figure
Rudyard Kipling
1865–1936
English writer and poet (1865–1936)
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Biography
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, novelist, poet and short-story writer. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.
Timeline
The story of Rudyard Kipling, told in moments.
Returns to India at 16 to work as a journalist in Lahore. He writes stories about army life, Indian villages, and the mechanics of empire. By 24, his tales of British India have made him the most famous young writer in the English-speaking world.
Publishes The Jungle Book. Mowgli, the boy raised by wolves, becomes one of the most recognized characters in world literature. He writes the sequel the following year.
Wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. He's 41, the youngest recipient and the first English-language writer to win. The award committee praises his "power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration."
His son John, 18, is killed at the Battle of Loos. Kipling had used his connections to get the near-sighted boy into the Irish Guards after he'd been rejected by the Army and Navy. John's body isn't found. Kipling spends years searching the battlefields of France.
Dies in London following a perforated duodenal ulcer. He's 70. He'd told his surgeon: "Something has come adrift inside me." He's buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey, between Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.
In Their Own Words (20)
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
As quoted from “Interview with an Immoral,” Arthur Gordon, Reader’s Digest (July 1959). Reprinted in the Kipling Society journal, “Six Hours with Rudyard Kipling”, Vol. XXXIV. No. 162 (June, 1967) pp. 5-8. Interview took place in June, 1935, 1959
There are only two divisions in the world to-day — human beings and Germans. And the German knows it. Human beings have long ago sickened of him and everything connected with him, of all he does, says, thinks and believes.
Speech at Southport, June 22, 1915. Quoted in The New York Times Current History, Volume 2; Volume 4. New York Times Company, 1917. Also quoted in Paul Piazza, Christopher Isherwood: Myth and Anti-Myth. Columbia University Press, 2010 (p.217)., 1915
The only serious enemy to the Empire, within or without, is that very Democracy which depends on the Empire for its proper comforts.
Letters of Travel: 1892-1913. London : MacMillan and Co., 1920. Quoted in Phillip Mallett, Ruydard Kipling: A Literary Life Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2003 (p. 144)., 1892
They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.
Danny Deever, Stanza 1., 1892
And oft-times cometh our wise Lord God, master of every trade,And tells them tales of His daily toil, of Edens newly made;And they rise to their feet as He passes by, gentlemen unafraid.
Dedication, Stanza 5., 1892
Artifacts (15)
Rudyard Kipling & Enid Bagnold
http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q110975090
![RUDYARD KIPLING [Material gráfico]](https://www.fotosantiguascanarias.org/oaistore/srvimg/img102/00014001_00014500/00014277/alta/00014277_0001.jpg)
Rudyard Kipling; an attempt at appreciation (IA rudyardkiplingat00monkrich)
Monkshood, G. F., b. 1872
Rudyard Kipling, Knjiga o džungli, Anton Podbevšek Teater, 2011/12. Fotografija 48
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