Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English writer and poet born in British India, author of The Jungle Book, Kim and Just So Stories, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.

Kipling was born in Bombay on 30 December 1865 and died in London on 18 January 1936; his ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey. His story collection Plain Tales from the Hills was published in Calcutta in January 1888, and Barrack-Room Ballads followed in March 1892. The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895) gathered stories first printed in magazines in 1893 and 1894. He also wrote the novel Captains Courageous, and Kim (1901), a spy novel set in British India that was serialised in McClure's and Cassell's magazines before Macmillan published it as a book. Just So Stories appeared in 1902 and Puck of Pook's Hill in 1906. His poems "If" and "Gunga Din" remain among his best known.

For collectors. The Macmillan first edition of The Jungle Book (1894) carries his father John Lockwood Kipling's embossed cover design and illustrations, with further pictures by W. H. Drake and Paul Frenzeny, and with The Second Jungle Book (1895) forms the core of a Kipling collection. Plain Tales from the Hills (Calcutta, 1888) is an important early collection, and Kim (1901) is the key novel.