Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in India on 30 December 1865. He was sent back to England when he was seven years old but returned to India in 1882 to work as the assistant editor of the Civil & Military Gazette in Lahore. He published poetry and stories in newspapers but it was the publication of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888 that brought him his first major success. His most famous works are Barrack-room Ballads (1892), The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and Just So Stories (1902). The Just So Stories were written for his children and are addressed to his six-year-old daughter Josephine, his 'best beloved', who died of pneumonia in 1899. Rudyard Kipling died on 18 January 1936.
The great adventure of identity, intrigue and India, and several other things too, including the extraordinary potency of words * Guardian * I don't just admire, I adore Kim -- Mark Tully I'm a passionate fan of Kipling. I think Kim is a singular and extraordinary novel, one of the greatest in English -- A. A. Gill The greatest of all Kipling's books -- E. M. Forster No summary can do this marvellous, rich and unforgettable novel anything like justice -- Philip Pullman