Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling was an English author and poet whose fiction and verse drew on his childhood in India and his experience of the British Empire.
The Jungle Book: A 1894 collection of stories, including tales of Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves in an Indian jungle. Its animal fables became Kipling’s most enduring stories for children.
Bombay: The former name of Mumbai, a major Indian port city and colonial center. Kipling was born there in 1865, in the city he later remembered as formative.
John Lockwood Kipling: An English art teacher, illustrator, and museum curator who worked in India; Rudyard Kipling’s father. His work and life in India informed the setting and visual culture of his son’s writing.
George Orwell: An English novelist, essayist, and critic known for political writing and works including Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell admired Kipling’s technical gifts while condemning his imperial politics.
Kim: A 1901 novel about Kimball O’Hara, an Irish orphan drawn into espionage and travel across British India. This novel gives Kipling’s fullest portrait of life across colonial India.
Lahore: A major city in present-day Pakistan that was an important center of British India. Kipling worked as a journalist in Lahore and began publishing fiction there.
Caroline Kipling: An English writer and the mother of Rudyard Kipling. Her family and literary connections helped shape Kipling’s early life and publishing world.
E. M. Forster: An English novelist and essayist whose works include A Passage to India. Forster’s approach to India and colonial relations offers a contrasting literary perspective.
If—: A poem by Rudyard Kipling, first published in 1910, that presents a father’s advice on self-command and perseverance. Its measured advice became one of Kipling’s most widely quoted works.
British Raj: The period of direct British Crown rule over much of the Indian subcontinent, from 1858 to 1947. The colonial system framed the society and institutions Kipling depicted.