Rudyard Kipling

Who Wrote Thirty-Two Lines Of Conditions · Poet & Storyteller · 1865–1936

The first writer in English to take the Nobel Prize, who built a poem about self-command out of thirty-two lines that refuse to reach their verb.

Who was Kipling?

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 and sent at six, with his sister, to a foster household in Southsea that he later called the House of Desolation. He returned to India at sixteen to work as a journalist in Lahore, and the newspaper work made him: short, exact, on deadline, and interested in how things are done. Plain Tales from the Hills and Barrack-Room Ballads made him famous absurdly young, and The Jungle Book, Kim and the Just So Stories kept him so. In 1907 he became the first writer in English to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, at forty-one. In 1910 he published If— in Rewards and Fairies, and said afterwards that it came out of the character of Leander Starr Jameson, whose raid on the Transvaal in 1895 failed catastrophically and who carried the blame in public without complaint. The poem is thirty-two lines of conditional clauses — if you can do this, if you can bear that — which do not reach a main verb until the last two, so a reader is held in suspension for the length of the argument. In 1915 his son John was killed at Loos, aged eighteen, after Kipling had used his influence to get him a commission he had twice been refused on his eyesight; the body was not identified in Kipling's lifetime. He served afterwards on the Imperial War Graves Commission and chose the words cut into the stones.

Major achievements

• First writer in English to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1907
• Wrote If—, published in Rewards and Fairies in 1910
• The Jungle Book, Kim, the Just So Stories and Barrack-Room Ballads
• Brought the speech of ordinary soldiers into English verse
• Chose the inscriptions on the Imperial War Graves Commission's headstones

Life in brief

• 1865 — Born in Bombay: Son of an artist and museum curator in British India.
• 1871 — Sent to Southsea: Six years in a foster household he later called the House of Desolation.
• 1882 — Journalist in Lahore: Newspaper deadlines make the writer.
• 1907 — Nobel Prize: The first writer in English to receive it.
• 1910 — If—: Published in Rewards and Fairies, out of the character of Jameson.
• 1915 — John killed at Loos: Aged eighteen; the body was never identified in his father's lifetime.
• 1917 — War Graves Commission: Chose the words cut into the headstones.
• 1936 — Dies in London: Buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Explore the life of Kipling — five chapters

1. The House of Desolation — Sent from Bombay to a boarding household at six
2. Seven Years to a Deadline — The newspaper that made the writer
3. The Empire's Poet, and the Argument About Him — A Nobel Prize, two refusals, and politics that will not be tidied away
4. Thirty-Two Lines That Refuse to Finish — If—, and the man it was actually about
5. Loos, and the Words on the Stones — A father's influence, an eighteen-year-old, and no grave

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