Rudyard Kipling

 

Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay, India. He was educated in England

but returned to India in 1882. In 1892, Kipling married Caroline Balestier and settled in Brattleboro,

Vermont, where he wrote The Jungle Book (1894) and "Gunga Din." Eventually becoming the highest

paid writer in the world, Kipling was recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.

He died in 1936.

 

Early Years

Considered one of the great English writers, Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay (now called Mumbai), India. At the time of his birth, his parents, John and Alice, were recent arrivals in India. They had come, like so many of their countrymen, with plans to start new lives and to help the British government run the continent. The family lived well, and Kipling was especially close to his mother. His father, an artist, was the head of the Department of Architectural Sculpture at the Jeejeebhoy School of Art in Bombay.

For Kipling, India was a wondrous place. Along with his younger sister, Alice, he reveled in exploring the local markets with his nanny. He learned the language, and in this bustling city of Anglos, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews, Kipling fell in love with the country and its culture.

However, at the age of 6, Kipling's life was torn apart when his mother, wanting her son to receive a formal British education, sent him to Southsea, England, where he attended school and lived with a foster family named the Holloways.

These were hard years for Kipling. Mrs. Holloway was a brutal woman who quickly grew to despise her young foster son. She beat and bullied Kipling, who also struggled to fit in at school. His only break from the Holloways came in December, when Kipling, who told nobody of his problems at school or with his foster parents, traveled to London, where he stayed with relatives for the month.

Kipling's solace came in books and stories. With few friends, he devoted himself to reading. He particularly adored the work of Daniel Defoe, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Wilkie Collins. When Mrs. Holloway took away his books, Kipling snuck around her, pretending to play in his room by moving furniture along the floor while he read.

By the age of 11, Kipling was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A visitor to his home saw his condition and immediately contacted his mother, who rushed back to England and rescued her son from the Holloways. To help relax his mind, Alice took her son on an extended vacation and then placed him in a new school in Devon. There, Kipling flourished and discovered his talent for writing, eventually becoming editor of the school newspaper.

 

 

 

The Young Writer

In 1882, Kipling was told by his parents that they didn't have enough money to send him to college. Instead, they had him return to India. It was a powerful moment in the young writer's life. The sights and sounds, even the language, which he'd believed he'd forgotten, rushed back to him upon his arrival.

Kipling made his home with his parents in Lahore and, with his father's help, found a job with a local newspaper. The job offered Kipling a good excuse to discover his surroundings. Nighttime, especially, proved to be valuable for the young writer. Kipling was a man of two worlds, somebody who was accepted by both his British counterparts and the local population. Suffering from insomnia, he roamed the city streets and gained access to the brothels and opium dens that rarely opened their doors to common Englishmen.

Kipling's experiences during this time formed the backbone for a series of stories he began to write and publish. They were eventually assembled into a collection of 40 short stories called Plain Tales from the Hills, which gained wide popularity in England.

In 1889, seven years after he had left England, Kipling returned to its shores in hopes of leveraging the modest amount of celebrity his book of short stories had earned him. In London, he met Wolcott Balestier, an American agent and publisher who quickly became one of Kipling's great friends and supporters. The two men grew incredibly close and even traveled together to the United States, where Balestier introduced his fellow writer to his childhood home of Brattleboro, Vermont.

Around this time, Kipling's star power started to grow. In addition to Plain Tales from the Hills, Kipling also published a second collection of short stories, Wee Willie Winkie (1888), and American Notes (1891), which chronicled his early impressions of America. In 1892, he also published his first major poetry success, Barrack-Room Ballads.

Kipling's friendship with Balestier changed the young writer's life. He soon got to know Balestier's family, in particular his sister, Carrie. The two appeared to be just friends, but during the Christmas holiday in 1891, Kipling, who had traveled back to India to see his family, received an urgent cable from Carrie. Wolcott had died suddenly of typhoid fever and Carrie needed Kipling to be with her.

Kipling rushed back to England, and within eight days of his return, the two married at a small ceremony attended by American writer Henry James.

 

Life in America

Following their wedding, the Kiplings set off on an adventurous honeymoon that took them to Canada and then on to Japan. But as was often the case in Kipling's life, good fortune was accompanied by hard luck. During the Japanese leg of the journey, Kipling learned that the New Oriental Banking Corporation had failed. The Kiplings were broke.

Left only with what they had with them, the young couple decided to travel to Brattleboro, Vermont, where much of Carrie's family still resided. Kipling fell in love with life in the States, and the two decided to settle there. In the spring of 1891, the Kiplings purchased from Carrie's brother, Beatty, a piece of land just north of Brattleboro and had a large home constructed, which they called "The Naulahka."

Kipling seemed to adore his new life, which soon saw the Kiplings welcome their first child, a daughter named Josephine (born in 1893), and a second daughter, Elsie (born in 1896). A third child, John, was born in 1897, after the Kiplings had left America.

As a writer, too, Kipling flourished. His work during this time included The Jungle Book (1894), The Naulahka: A Story of the West and East (1892) andThe Second Jungle Book (1895), among others. Kipling was delighted to be around children—a characteristic that was apparent in his writing. His tales enchanted boys and girls all over the English-speaking world. By the age of 32, Kipling was the highest-paid writer in the world.

 

Taken from Biography.com