Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was an English writer, born in Bombay in British India, and is best known for The Jungle Book, the collection of animal stories that includes Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. In 1907 he became the first writer in English to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, and at 41 he is still the youngest winner of the literature prize.

His father, John Lockwood Kipling, taught at the art school in Bombay and later drew some of the original Jungle Book illustrations. Rudyard was sent to England as a small child and schooled in Devon. From 1883 to 1889 he worked as a journalist in India, first in Lahore and then in Allahabad.

In 1892 he married Caroline Balestier, an American, and they built a house in Vermont. The Jungle Book was written there and came out in 1894; in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a mongoose fights two cobras in the garden of a bungalow in India. From 1902 until his death he lived at Bateman’s, a house in Sussex. Of his three children, Josephine died at six and John was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915.