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 stories The Jungle Book (1894), the Indian spy novel Kim (1901), the poems "Gunga Din" (1892) and "If— " (1895), and his many short stories.
For a time after his death, he was not popular in literary circles, mainly because he was perceived as a defender of Western imperialism, who coined the phrase "the white man's burden", but in recent times, the appeal of his writing has outweighed these considerations. The height of his popularity was the first decade of the 20th century: in 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, he remains its youngest-ever recipient.
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.
The Jungle Book 2 (2003)
