Rudyard Kipling Was Born on December 30, 1865 at Bombay

Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865 at Bombay, India, where his father, John Lockwood Kipling, himself an artist, was principal of the Jeejeebyhoy Art School. His mother, Alice Macdonald Kipling, had three sisters who married well: among his uncles young Rudyard there were famous painters such as Sir Edward Burne-Jones (one of the most important of the Pre-Raphaelites) and Sir Edward Poynter but also Stanley Baldwin, a future Prime Minister, and these family members were to be of great importance in Kipling's life. The first six years of his life in India were happy ones but in 1871 the Kipling family returned to England. After six months John and Alice Kipling returned to India, leaving six-year old Rudyard and his three-year-old sister with the Holloway family in Southsea. During his five years in this foster home* he was bullied *and physically mistreated* and these years were a psychological shock to him , he also felt his parents had betrayed* him . Between 1878 and 1882 he went to the United Services College in north Devon. The College was a new and very rough* boarding school* where , physically frail, he was once again bullied, but where, nevertheless*, he developed a love of literature. In 1882 Kipling returned to India, where he spent the next seven years working as a journalist and where he began to write about India and the Anglo-Indian society His first volume of poetry, Departmental Ditties, was published in 1886, and between 1887 and 1889 he published six volumes of short stories were the action was set in India , a country he knew well and loved : when he returned to England in 1889 via the United States he found himself already acclaimed as a brilliant young writer. In 1890 The Light That Failed, his first novel (which was only modestly successful) also appeared*. By the time Barrack-Room Ballads had appeared in 1892 , Kipling was an enormous popular and critical success. In 1891 he travelled to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and India. In 1892 Kipling married Caroline Balestier, an American. They went on a honeymoon* to Japan, but they returned to live at his wife's home in Vermont (USA), where they remained* until 1899, when Kipling, alone, returned to England. During the American years, however, Kipling wrote Captain's Courageous, Many Inventions, the famous poem "Recessional," Kim, and the greater portion of the two Jungle Books, which were all very successful. In 1899 Kipling made his last visit to the United States, and was deeply affected by the death of his eldest child, Josephine. Frequently in poor health* himself, Kipling generally spent winter in South Africa every year between 1900 and 1908. In 1902 he bought the house ("Bateman's") in Sussex which was his home in England until his death: Sussex is at the center of some children books he wrote (like Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies) as well as historical and national problems he felt concerned with. In 1907 Kipling was awarded* the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1915 his son John was killed in action during World War I, and in 1917 he published A Diversity of Creatures, a collection of short stories . Between 1919 and 1932 Kipling travelled intermittently, and continued to publish stories, poems, sketches, and historical works. He died in London on January 18, 1936, just after his seventieth birthday, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, in London. Among his friends were a prime minister, an admiral, a general, and the head of a Cambridge college. VOCABULARY HELP : a foster home : une famille d’accueil / to bully : persécuter, tyranniser / to mistreat : maltraiter / to betray : trahir / rough = tough, hard / a boarding-school : a school where you sleep at night / nevertheless : néanmoins / to appear : apparaître / a honeymoon : une lune de miel /to remain = to stay : rester / in poor health : en mauvaise santé / to award : récompenser .

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