19532 - Rudyard Kipling: East is East and West is West and Never the Twain Shall Meet

Course Overview

Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and its youngest recipient to date. Born in India in 1865, he considered himself an Anglo-Indian," more comfortable with the dialects of India than with the English of his parents. At the age of five, he was sent to live in England under cruel and neglectful conditions, conditions that he believed shaped his writing. Today, he is remembered for children's stories, The Jungle Book and Kim, yet George Orwell stated Kipling was "a prophet of British imperialism" – a view that would cost Kipling his son's life. Was Kipling an imperialist? A product of his time? Or a misunderstood writer who stated "But there is neither East nor West . . . when strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!"