Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling (1865 to 1936) was an English journalist, novelist, poet and short story writer, born in Bombay in British India, a setting that shaped much of what he wrote. His fiction includes the two Jungle Book volumes of the 1890s, the novel Kim of 1901 and the Just So Stories of 1902, together with many short stories such as The Man Who Would Be King. His verse ranges from the ballads Mandalay and Gunga Din to the later poem If. He is remembered as an innovator of the short story, and his children's books are counted as classics. In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first writer in English to do so and, at forty one, the youngest recipient to that date. He declined both a knighthood and the post of Poet Laureate, and his ashes lie in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.