Joseph Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865 – January 18, 1936) was a British author and poet, born in India. He is best known for the book of children's tales The Jungle Book (1894), the Indian spy novel Kim (1901), the poems "Gunga Din" (1892), and "If—" (1895), as well as many of his short stories.
The height of Kipling's popularity was the first decade of the 20th century: in 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and still remains its youngest-ever recipient, as well as the first English language writer to receive the prize.
In his own lifetime he was primarily regarded as a poet, and was offered a knighthood and the post of British poet laureate, though he turned them both down.
Kipling was born in Bombay, India; the house in which he was born still stands on the campus of the Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art in Bombay. His father was John Lockwood Kipling, a teacher at the local Jeejeebhoy School of Art, and his mother was Alice Macdonald.
From Wikipedia
More information on Rudyard Kipling at: The Kipling Society
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