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. His mother's sister was married to the artist [Edward Burne-Jones]?, and young Kipling and his sister spent much time with the Joneses in England from the ages of six to twelve, while his parents remained in India.
After a spell at boarding school, Kipling returned to India himself, to Lahore? (in modern-day Pakistan) where his parents now were, in 1881. He began working for as a newspaper editor for a local edition and continued tentative steps into the world of poetry; his first professional sales were in 1883.
By the mid-1880s he was travelling around the subcontinent as a correspondent for the Allahabad Pioneer. His fiction sales also began to bloom, and he published six short books of short stories in 1888. One short story dating this time is "'The Man Who Would Be a King", later made famous as a slightly differently named movie featuring Sean Connery. The next year Kipling began a long journey back to England, going through Burma, China, Japan, and California before crossing the United States and the Atlantic Ocean and settling in London.
From then on his fame grew rapidly, and he positioned himself as the literary voice most closely associated with the imperialist tempo of the time in the United Kingdom (and, indeed, the rest of the Western world and Japan). His first novel, The Light that Failed, was published in 1890. The most famous of his poems of this time is probably "The Ballad of East and West" (which begins "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet")
In 1892 he married Caroline Balastier; her brother, an American writer, had been Kipling's friend but died of [typhoid fever]? the previous year. While on honeymoon Kipling's bank failed and cashing in their travel tickets only let the couple return as far as Vermont (where most of the Balastier family lived). Rudyard and his new bride would live in the United States for the next four years. During this time he turned his hand to writing for children, and he published the work for which he is most remembered today -- [The Jungle Book]? -- and its sequel in 1894 and 1895.
After a quarrel with his in-laws, he and his wife returned to England, and in 1897 he published [Captains Courageous]?. The next year he would begin travelling to southern Africa for winter vacations most every year. There he would meet and befriend another icon of British imperialism, [Cecil Rhodes]?, and begin collecting material for another of his children's classics, [Just So Stories]? for Little Children. The latter was published in 1902, and another of his enduring works, the Indian spy novel Kim?, first saw the light of day the previous year. His poetry of the time included "The White Man's Burden". In the non-fiction realm he also became involved in the debate over the British response to the rise in German naval power, publishing a series of articles collectively entitled A Fleet in Being.
As the first decade of the 20th century continued, Kipling was at the height of his popularity. In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature; bookending this achievement was the publication of two connected poetry and story collections, 1906's Puck of Pook Hill and 1910's Rewards and Fairies. The latter contained what is arguably Kipling's single most famous poem "If--?", an exhortation to seize the day containing the famous lines
As closely associated as Kipling's popularity was with the expansive and confident attitude of European civilization at the end of the 19th century, it should come as no surprise that his reputation took a turn for the worse in the years of and after World War I; Kipling also suffered personal tragedy as his eldest son, John, died in 1915 at the [Battle of Loos]?. Perhaps partly in response, he joined [Sir Fabian Ware]?'s Imperial War Graves Commission (now the [Commonwealth War Graves Commission]?), the group responsible for the garden-like British war graves that can be found to this day dotted along the former [Western Front]?.
Kipling continued writing until the early 1930s, but at a slower pace and to much less success than before. He died of a brain hemhorrage in early 1936, and suffered a continuing critical eclipse afterwards. It is difficult to place Kipling in the pantheon of great (or not-so-great) writers, as much of the criticism directed at him has much more to do with his near-embodiment of the imperialist ideal than the actual work; as the European colonial empires collapsed in the mid-20th century and communism presented attitudes that were intriguing to some western intelligentsia, Kipling's works were as far out of step with the tempo of those times as would seem possible. If anyplace, his major influence in the period immediately following his death was on American science fiction, as John W. Campbell considered him an ideal to be followed -- many SF writers to the modern day consciously write in his mould. Barring this, it is worth noting that today he is most highly regarded for his children's books, while in his own lifetime he was primarily regarded as a poet (even so far as to have been offered the position of British [Poet Laureate]?, though he turned this down). There are signs of rehabilitation in Kipling's reputation both as a writer of mature prose and of poesy, as public tastes once again change. Where the pendulum of regard will come to rest remains to be seen.
After the death of Kipling's sole surviving child in 1974, his mansion in Sussex? was bequeathed to the [National Trust]? and is now a public museum to the author.
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