Kipling, Joseph Rudyard

(1865-1936)

   He was born in Bombay (Mumbai), India, where his father was curator of the Lahore museum. From the age of six to eleven he was fostered at Southsea, England, and his education was mainly at the United Services College at Westward Ho, north Devon. At seventeen he returned to India and worked for seven years as a journalist. From then on his output of novels, poems, and children's stories (usually about life in India) was prodigious. He returned to England in 1889, and his reputation was enhanced in 1892 by the publication of Barrack-Room Ballads. In 1922 he was elected lord rector of St. Andrews University; honors were heaped upon him by many universities in Britain and Europe; he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He died of a perforated duodenum at Burwash, Sussex, and was buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. Some of his other poetry publications: Departmental Ditties, 1896. The Seven Seas, 1896. The Five Nations, 1903. The Years Between, 1919. Some of his poems: "An American," "Cuckoo Song," "Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a Bear," "If," "The Absent-Minded Beggar," "The Outlaws," "Verses on Games."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Rudyard Kipling: Complete Verse, Definitive Edition. Doubleday, 1989. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Westminster Abbey Official Guide (no date).