Plain Tales from the Hills

RUDYARD KIPLING (1865-1936), born in Bombay, he was brought to England in 1871, where he spent five years living unhappily in Southsea with his younger sister, separated from his parents. From 1882 to 1889 he worked as a journalist in India; many of his early poems and stories were originally published in newspapers or for the Indian Railway Library. In 1896 he returned to England, settling in Sussex, though Kipling continued to travel extensively, spending much time in South Africa, which he first visited in 1900, during the Boer War, where he had first sight of warfare. In 1907 he was the first English writer to receive the Nobel Prize. His fluent versification, with its powerful echoes of hymns and ballads, and his use in both prose and verse of colloquial speech, impressed many but alienated others. His most uncontroversial and durable achievements are his tales for children, principally “The Jungle Book” (1894); “Just So Stories” (1902); “Puck of Pook´s Hill” (1906); and “Rewards and Fairies” (1910), and his picaresque novel of India “Kim”, generally considered his masterpiece.