The English poet and story writer Rudyard Kipling passed away on 18th January in 1986. He was one of the first masters of the short story in English, and he was the first to use Cockney dialect (the manner in which natives of London, England’s East End speak) in serious poetry.
Early life
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay, India. His father was professor of architectural sculpture at the Bombay School of Art. In 1871 Kipling was sent to England for his education. In 1878, Rudyard entered the United Services College at Westward Ho!, a boarding school in Devon. There young “Gigger,” as he was called, endured bullying and harsh discipline, but he also enjoyed the close friendships, practical jokes, and merry pranks he later recorded in Stalky & Co. (1899).
Kipling’s closest friend at Westward Ho!, George Beresford, described him as a short, but “cheery, capering, podgy, little fellow” with a thick pair of spectacles over “a broad smile.” When Kipling sent some of these to India, his father had them privately printed as Schoolboy Lyrics (1881), Kipling’s first published work.
Schooling
Rudyard Kipling and his sister Alice were sent to England for education. The children stayed with another British couple, Holloways for six years from1811 to 1877. Kipling and his sister were not happy during their stay at Mrs. and Mr. Holloways. The two children used to visit and stay with their maternal aunt in London during school holidays.
In 1878, Kipling was admitted to United Services College at Westward. Kipling met Florence Garrard during his stay in this college. She became a model for her in his first novel, “The Light that Failed”.
The family did not have sufficient funds to continue him in a university, without a scholarship. The family decided to find a job for Kipling in Lahore (British India). Mr. Kipling found a job in a newspaper office, The Civil and Military Gazette. His job was to assist the editor of the local newspaper.
Back to India
Immediately on his arrival to Bombay, Rudyard Kipling found his childhood memories rushing back. On moving around among the familiar sights and sounds, native words, whose meanings he did not know, began to tumble out of his mouth.
He now put up with his parents, then posted at Lahore and began his career as a copy editor for the ‘Civil and Military Gazette.’ His parents were not officially important, but still commanded certain respect. Therefore, he had access to the highest echelon of the British society.
Concurrently, he moved around in the native neighborhoods, absorbing the colorful life of the native Indians. Thus he had the opportunity to observe the whole spectrum of the social fabric. With an unstoppable urge to write, he now began to fill his notebook with light verses and prose sketches.
In the summer of 1883, he visited Shimla, a well-known hill station and the summer capital of India. He must have liked the place very much for from 1885 to 1888, he made yearly visit to the place. The town featured prominently in many stories he wrote for his newspaper.
In 1886, he had his first work, ‘Departmental Ditties’, a book of witty verses, published. Concurrently, he continued to write short stories, among which, at least thirty-nine were published in the Gazette between November 1886 and June 1887.
In November 1887, Kipling was transferred to Allahabad. Here he worked until early 1889 as an Assistant Editor at the Gazette’s sister paper, ‘The Pioneer.’ The period was literarily very productive. II
In January 1888, he had his first book of short stories published from Calcutta (now Kolkata). Titled, ‘Plain Tales from the Hills’, it contained forty short stories, out of which twenty-eight were pre-published in the Gazette in 1886/1887.
Also in 1888, he had six other collections of short stories published. They were ‘Soldiers Three’, ‘The Story of the Gadsbys’, ‘In Black and White’, ‘Under the Deodars’, ‘The Phantom Rickshaw’, and ‘Wee Willie Winkie’. In all, they contained forty one stories, some of which were quite long.
During this period, he also traveled extensively in the western region of Rajputana as the special correspondent of ‘The Pioneer.’ The sketches he wrote during this period were later included in his 1889 publication ‘From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel’.
Fame in England
In 1889, Kipling took a long voyage through China, Japan, and the United States. When he reached London, he found that his stories had preceded him and established him as a brilliant new author. He was readily accepted into the circle of leading writers. While there he wrote a number of stories and some of his best-remembered poems: “A Ballad of East and West,” “Mandalay,” and “The English Flag.” He also introduced English readers to a “new genre [type]” of serious poems in Cockney dialect: “Danny Deever,” “Tommy,” “Fuzzy-Wuzzy,” and “Gunga Din.”
Kipling’s first novel, The Light That Failed (1891), was unsuccessful. But when his stories were collected as Life’s Handicap (1891) and poems as Barrackroom Ballads (1892), Kipling replaced Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) as the most popular English author.
The American years
In 1892, Kipling married Caroline Balestier. They settled on the Balestier estate near Brattleboro, Vermont, in the United States, and began four of the happiest years of Kipling’s life. During this time he wrote some of his best work— Many Inventions (1893), perhaps his best volume of short stories; The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895), two books of animal fables that attracted readers of all ages by illustrating the larger truths of life; The Seven Seas (1896), a collection of poems in experimental rhythms; and Captains Courageous (1897), a novel-length, sea story. These works not only assured Kipling’s lasting fame as a serious writer but also made him a rich man.
His imperialism
In 1897, the Kiplings settled in Rottingdean, a village on the British coast near Brighton. The outbreak of the Spanish-American War (1898; a short war between Spain and the United States over lands including Cuba and the Philippines) and the Boer War (1899–1902; a war between Great Britain and South Africa) turned Kipling’s attention to colonial affairs. He began to publish a number of solemn poems in standard English in the London Times. The most famous of these, “Recessional” (July 17, 1897), issued a warning to Englishmen to regard their accomplishments in the Diamond Jubilee (fiftieth) year of Queen Victoria’s (1819–1901) reign with humility and awe rather than pride and arrogance. The equally well-known “White Man’s Burden” (February 4, 1899) clearly expressed the attitudes toward the empire that are implied in the stories in The Day’s Work (1898) and A Fleet in Being (1898).
Kipling referred to less highly developed peoples as “lesser breeds” and considered order, discipline, sacrifice, and humility to be the essential qualities of colonial rulers. These views have been denounced as racist (believing that one race is better than others), elitist (believing oneself to be a part of a superior group), and jingoistic (pertaining to a patriot who speaks in favor of an aggressive and warlike foreign policy). But for Kipling, the term “white man” indicated citizens of the more highly developed nations. He felt it was their duty to spread law, literacy, and morality throughout the world.
During the Boer War, Kipling spent several months in South Africa, where he raised funds for soldiers’ relief and worked on an army newspaper, the Friend. In 1901 Kipling published Kim, the last and most charming of his portrayals of Indian life. But anti-imperialist reaction following the end of the Boer War caused a decline in Kipling’s popularity.
When Kipling published The Five Nations, a book of South African verse, in 1903, he was attacked in parodies (satirical imitations), caricatures (exaggerations for comic effect), and serious protests as the opponent of a growing spirit of peace and democratic equality. Kipling retired to “Bateman’s,” a house near Burwash, a secluded village in Essex.
By now, Kipling had reached the peak of his popularity. Other than ‘Kim’, ‘Just So Stories for Little Children’ (1902) and ‘Puck of Pook’s Hill’ (1906) were two of his most famous works of the early 1900s.
At around the same time, Kipling became involved in politics, making appeals on various issues on both sides of the Atlantic. During the First World War, he enthusiastically wrote pamphlets and poems, supporting the UK’s war effort and made sure his son John was recruited in the army despite having short eye sight.
In 1915, John went missing, never to be found. Kipling expressed his grief in his poem ‘My Boy Jack’ (1916). After the war he joined the Imperial War Graves Commission and described his experience in a moving story called ‘Gardener’.
Kipling continued to write until the early 1930s, albeit at a slower pace. ‘Tales of India: the Windermere Series’ published in 1935, is probably the last publication during his lifetime. His autobiography, ‘Something of Myself‘, was published posthumously in 1937.
Trivia
The first three stories of ‘Just So Stories for Little Children’ were first published in a children’s magazine. He was required to tell them, ‘just so’ (as they have been published) to little Josephine at bedtime. When after her death, he published these stories in book form, he named it ‘Just so Stories’.
Awards & Achievements
In 1907, Rudyard Kipling received the Nobel Prize in literature “in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author”.
In 1926, he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Literature
