Author, Nobel Prize in Literature Recipient. Born the son of John Lockwood Kipling, a teacher at the Jeejeebhoy School of Art, and Alice Macdonald Kipling in Bombay, India. His care was entrusted to his ayah who taught him Hindustani in the nursery. At six he was taken to England by his parents,and for five years he was left at a foster home in Southsea where he hated his treatment and his situation. In 1878, Kipling entered United Services College, a boarding school in Devon. Kipling returned to India in 1882, where he worked as a journalist in Lahore for the 'Civil and Military Gazette' and an assistant editor and overseas correspondent in Allahabad for the 'Pioneer'. His literary career began with 'Departmental Ditties' in 1886, but he became better known as a writer of short stories. Stories written during his years in India were collected in the anthology 'The Phantom Rickshaw'. Kipling wrote prolifically and achieved fame quickly. In 1889, he returned to England and published 'Life's Handicap' in 1891, and 'Barrack-Room Ballads', which included 'Gunga Din'. In 1892, Kipling married Caroline Starr Balestier, the sister of an American publisher, and moved to Vermont in the United States. After the death of his daughter Josephine, however, he took his family back to England and settled in Burwash, Sussex. He published 'The Jungle Book' in 1894, 'Captains Courageous' in 1897, 'Kim' in 1901, and 'Just So Stories' in 1902 among many others. He was regarded as an unofficial poet laureate since he refused that and many other honors, among them the Order of Merit. In 1907, Kipling became a Nobel Laureate in Literature. His young son, John, was killed at the Battle of Loos during World War I, and in response, Kipling joined the Imperial War Graves Commission, contributing to the project the Biblical quote: 'Their Name Liveth For Evermore' (Sirach 44:14) which was inscribed on Stones of Remembrance over war graves. In 1923, Kipling published 'The Irish Guards in the Great War', a history of his son's regiment, but his output of fiction and poetry declined. He served as a rector at the University of St. Andrews from 1922 to 1925. In 1926, Kipling was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Literature, which had been awarded only three times before. Kipling wrote until the early 1930s, but at a slower pace and with less success than previously. His autobiography, 'Something of Myself', was published posthumously in 1937. After the death of Kipling's widow in 1939, his house in Sussex was bequeathed to the National Trust and is now a museum dedicated to the author.