Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in Bombay at the
height of the British Raj. He was brought up in the pampered existence
of a child of the British Colonial powers in India, learning Hindustani
as his mother tongue, until the age of five when he was sent, with his
three year old sister, back to Britain to be brought up British. The
foster family they lodged with was brutally disciplinarian and Kipling
and his sister suffered a very unpleasant few years (until his mother
removed them). Kipling, however, attributed the growth of his literary
imagination to the lies he learnt to tell to avoid the beatings.
Regarded as a major “innovator in the art of the short story” he is
best known for The Jungle Book and Just So Stories and his novel kim,
his poems Gunga Din and If and his many short stories including The
Man Who Would Be King.
