(born Dec. 30, 1865, Bombay, India—died Jan. 18, 1936, London, Eng.) Indian-born British novelist, short-story writer, and poet. The son of a museum curator, he was reared in England but returned to India as a journalist. He soon became famous for volumes of stories, beginning with
Plain Tales from the Hills (1888; including “The Man Who Would Be King”), and later for the poetry collection
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892; including “Gunga Din” and “Mandalay”). His poems, often strongly rhythmic, are frequently narrative ballads. During a residence in the U.S., he published a novel,
The Light That Failed (1890); the two
Jungle Books (1894, 1895), stories of the wild boy Mowgli in the Indian jungle that have become children's classics; the adventure story
Captains Courageous (1897); and
Kim (1901), one of the great novels of India. He wrote six other volumes of short stories and several other verse collections. His children's books include the famous
Just So Stories (1902) and the fairy-tale collection
Puck of Pook's Hill (1906). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His extraordinary popularity in his own time declined as his reputation suffered after World War I because of his widespread image as a jingoistic imperialist.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
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