Rudyard Kipling
(Joseph) Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865 – January 18, 1936) was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist who was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907[1], a selection that later came to be almost universally mocked. He is today mostly remembered for his tales for children, although during his lifetime he was a worldwide celebrity, known for his novels, poems, and short stories. Although his reputation took a steep decline in the 1930s, from which it has never recovered, for many years prior to that he was the personification of the British Empire. He was born in Bombay (Mumbai) and was taken by his family to England in 1871. He started as a writer of short stories about British life in India, many of which were written for newspapers there and later collected. His stories for children include The Jungle Book, The Second Jungle Book, and Just So Stories. His major novel is Kim: A Tale of Adventure. He wrote many other short stories, which appeared in various collections, as did his poems. T.S. Eliot made a selection of his poems, which he referred to as "verse".[2] .
His poetic style was easily mocked:
As I was walkin' the jungle round, a-killin' of tigers an' time
I seed a kind of an author man a writin' a rousin' rhyme; [3]
As well as:
Will there never come a season
Which shall rid us from the curse
Of a prose that knows no reason
And an unmelodious verse....
When the Rudyards cease from Kipling
And the Haggards Ride no more? [4]
References
- ↑ Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed Margaret Drabble, Oxford University Press 1995
- ↑ A choice of Kipling's verse made by T.S. Eliot, Faber and Faber, 1941
- ↑ "A Ballad", by Guy Wetmore Carryl, in Parodies: An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm—and After, Dwight Macdonald, Editor, Random House, New York, 1960, page 152, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-12147
- ↑ "To R. K. (1891)", by J. K. Steven, in Parodies: An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm—and After, Dwight Macdonald, Editor, Random House, New York, 1960, pages 152-153, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-12147