Born on 30 December 1865 in India Rudyard Kipling is best remembered as the author of such works as The Jungle Books, Just so Stories, and Kim. My personal favorite - The Man Who Would Be King. He was also a champion of the common British soldier and many of his poems reflect this. He died in 1936.

If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!

                                                                    from A Young British Soldier by Rudyard Kipling

While Kipling gained a worldwide readership during his lifetime and would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Literature in 1926 he had previously refused to accept the Poet Laureateship after the death of Tennyson in 1895. He also refused a knighthood and the Order of Merit.


Cabinet Photograph
Unknown  - Photographer
Unknown Location
c. 1900

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Below: A typed note to school teacher Miss Edna Sherman from Rudyard Kipling's secretary fulfilling a request for Mr. Kipling's autograph for her school's collection.

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Cut Autograph

Laid Down on Typed Secretay's Note

5 1/4 inches by 8 inches

(13cm x 20cm)

Bateman's, Burwash, Sussex, England

5 November 1927