Rudyard Kipling

kipling, esprit.be, Rudyard Kipling 

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling  was born on 30 December  in 1865.

Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) is a British author, famed for short stories, poems and tales of the British Empire in India. Children may know him best for "The Jungle Book", a collection of stories first published in magazines in 1893, made into a Disney animated movie in 1967, and then the TV show TaleSpin in 1990. Kipling won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.

He gained popularity through the turn of the 20th century, Kipling became the first English language writer to win the Noble Prize in Literature in 1907.  After his death in 1936, however, the controversy over his subject matter has only increased.  Indian nationalists in particular continue to have a complicated relationship to his works, yet he continues to influence writers today, and Disney's adaptation of The Jungle Book has immortalized him to generations of children.

Great authors do not exist in a vacuum.  They are influenced by the time in which they live, and their legacy can alter based on the politics of the age which remembers them.  As the years pass, works can change from controversial to endeared and back to controversial as the tide inevitably shifts.  The bigger the issue an author's memory is tied to, the more fascinating it can be.

kipling, esprit.be, Rudyard Kipling