English short-story writer, novelist and poet, who celebrated the heroism of British colonial soldiers in India and Burma. "It is true that Mr Kipling shouts, 'Hurrah for the Empire!' and puts out his tongue at her enemies," Virginia Woof wrote in 1920. Rudyard Kipling was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (1907). His most popular works include The Jungle Book (1894) with such unforgettable characters as Mowgli, Baloo, and Bagheera. The book was adapted into screen by Zoltan Korda and André de Toth in 1942. Walt Disney's cartoon version was produced in the 1960s.

"O thirty million English that babble of England's might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children's children are lisping to "honor the charge they made - "
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!"
(from 'The Last of the Light Brigade', 1891)

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, where his father, John Lockwood Kipling, was an arts and crafts teacher at the Jeejeebhoy School of Art. His mother, the former Alice Macdonald, was a sister-in-law of the painter Edward Burne-Jones. India was at that time ruled by the British. Ruddy, as Kipling was affectionally called, was brought up by an ayah, who taught him Hidustani as his first language.

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!
(from 'The Ballad of East and West')

Kipling's writings at the age of thirteen were influenced by the pre-Raphaelites – and he also had family connections to them: two of his mother's sisters were married into the pre-Raphaelite community. At the age of six he was taken to England by his parents and left for five years at a foster home at Southsea. Kipling, who was not accustomed to traditional English beatings, expressed later his feeling of the treatment in the short story 'Baa Baa, Black Sheep', in the novel The Light That Failed (1890), and in his autobiography (1937).

In 1878 Kipling entered United Services College, a boarding school in North Devon. It was an expensive institution that specialized in training for entry into military academies. His poor eyesight and mediocre results as a student ended hopes about military career. These years Kipling recalled in lighter tone in one of his most popular books, Stalky & Co (1899). Kipling's bookishness separated him from the other students; he had to wear glasses and was nicknamed "Giggers", or "Giglamps"; the name originated from Robert Browning's poem 'Bishop Blougram's Apology' in Men and Women (1855). Kipling wrote about the non-conformist Headmaster, Cormell Price, an old friend of the family: "Many of us loved the Head for what he had done for us, but I owed him more than all of them put together and I think I loved him even more than they did." Price was not a clergyman, not very usual for a headmaster of those days, but it was convenient for Lockwood Kipling, a disbeliever in religion.

Kipling returned to India in 1882, where he worked as a journalist in Lahore for Civil and Military Gazette (1882-87) and an assistant editor and overseas correspondent in Allahabad for Pioneer (1887-89). The stories written during his last two years in India were collected in The Phantom Rickshaw. It that included the famous story 'The Man Who Would Be a King.' In the story a white trader, Daniel Dravot sets himself up as a god and king in Kafristan, but a woman discovers that he is a human and betrays him. His companion, Peachey Carnehan, manages to escape to tell the tale, but Dravot is killed.

Kilping's short stories and verses gained success in the late 1880s in England, to which he returned in 1889, and was hailed as a literary heir to Charles Dickens. When he toured Japan he criticized the Japanese middle-class for its eagerness to adopt western fashions and values. "... I was a barbarian, and no true Sahib," he wrote. Between the years 1889 and 1892, Kipling lived in London and published Life's Handicap (1891), a collection of Indian stories that included 'The Man Who Was,' and Barrack-Room Ballads, a collection of poems that included 'Gunga Din,' a praise of a Hindu water carrier for a British Indian regiment. Wellington had viewed the private soldier as "the very scum of the earth," but Kipling portrayed him as the embodiment of British virtue. 

In 1892 Kipling married Caroline Starr Balestier, the sister of an American publisher and writer, with whom he collaborated a novel, The Naulahka (1892). The young couple moved to the United States. They spent four years in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling built their house, Naulakha, a long wooden dwelling. From its window he could see Mount Monadnock, "like a gigantic thumbnail pointing heavenward." However, this idyllic, creative period in Kipling's career came to an end, when he quarreled with his brother-in-law, Beatty Balestier, and had him arrested and charged with assault. "There are only two places in the world where I want to live – Bombay and Brattleboro," he told to his friends. "And I can't live in either." (Vermont Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff by Robert Wilson, 2009, p. 25) After the death of his daughter, Josephine, Kipling took his family back to England and settled in Burwash, Sussex.

According to the author's sister, Kipling became a "harder man" – but also his political beliefs started to stiffen. Max Beerbohm laughed at his code of honour in A Christmas Garland (1912): "We makes our mistakes. An' when we makes 'em we sticks to 'em. For the honour o' the Force. Which same is the jool Britannia wears on 'er bosom as a charm against hanarchy."

Kipling's marriage was not in all respects happy. The author was dominated by his wife who had troubles to accept all aspects of her husband's character. During these restless years Kipling produced Many Inventions (1893), Jungle Book (1894), a collection of animal stories for children, The Secons Jungle Book (1895), and The Seven Seas (1896). Just So Stories (1902) were illustrated by Kipling himself.

"England is a most marvellous country, but one is not, till one knows the eccentricities of large land-owners, trained to accept kangaroos, zebras, or beavers as part of its landscape." (from 'Steam Tactics' in Traffics and Discoveries, 1904)

Widely regarded as unofficial poet laureate, Kipling refused this and many honors, among them the Order of Merit. During the Boer War in 1899 Kipling spent several months in South Africa. Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle, who served on a hospital, were driven around various battlefield sites in a cart. After having witnessed the determination of the Boer fighters, he wrote in 'The Lesson': "Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should, We have had no end of lesson; it will do us no end of good." In 1902 he moved to Sussex, also spending time in South Africa, where he was given a house by Cecil Rhodes, the influential British colonial statesman.

Kim (1901), on which Kipling worked intermittently for at least eight years, is widely considered his best novel. Set in India, it depicted adventures of an orphaned son of a sergeant in an Irish regiment. His own children appeared in the stories as Dan and Una – the death of "Dan" (John) in the WW I darkened author's later life. John Kipling was a brave young officer, but like his father he was short-sighted and had first failed his army medical examination because of poor eye sight. He died at the age of 18 in the Battle of Loos.

Edmund Wilson labelled Kim in his essay 'The Kipling that Nobody Read' (1941) as "almost a first-rate book". Its origins can be traced to Kipling's earlier, unrealized novel entitled Mother Maturin. Kipling destroyed this work but presented the manuscript of Kim under its original title "Kim O' the Rishti" to the British Museum. The protagonist, Kimball O'Hara, is the orphan son of an Irish colour-sergeant and a nursemaid in a colonel's family. Kim meets a Tibetian Lama and attaches himself to the old man as a discipline. Working for the British Secret Service, Kim carries a vital message to Colonel Creighton in Umballa and is helped by the Lame on his journey. The chaplain of his father's old regiment recognizes Kim and he is dispatched to the scool of Anglo-Indian children at Lucknow. Kim rejoins the Lama in an expedition to the hill country of the North and his destiny is left undecided – the life of an adventurer and the values of contemplation both attract him. Behind the story of Kim is perhaps true characters – Peter Hopkirk mentions in his book Quest for Kim (1997) a certain Tim Doolan, the son of an Irish sergeant.

Soon after Kipling had received the Nobel Prize, his output of fiction and poems began to decline. All of his teeth were taken out and for a long time he suffered from an undiagnosed pain, which was not correctly dignosed as duodenal ulcers until 1933 in Paris. In 1923 Kipling published The Irish Guards in the Great War, a history of his son's regiment. Between the years 1922 and 1925 he was a rector at the University of St. Andrews.

A large part of the best work of Kipling's last period was melancholic or sombre, "no less tormented and mazelike than the stories of Kafka or Henry James," as Jorge Luís Borges says in El informe de Brodie (1970), with the exception of the laboured Wodehouse-like farce 'Aunt Ellen' (1932). On occasion, Kipling enjoyed films – Fred Niblo's Ben Hur (1925) was one of his favorites. (Race, Modernism and the Question of Late Style in Kipling's Racial Narratives' by David Glover, in Modernism and Race, edited by Len Platt, 2011, p. 97-115)

Kipling died on January 18, 1936 in a London nursing-home, and was buried in Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey. The death of King George V on 20 January 1936 robbed Kipling much of the public tributes he would have otherwise received. In his will Kipling bequeathed a large sum of money to the Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School for British orphans, which had opened in 1935. The community, built as a result of a campaing started by Kingsley Fairbridge (1885-1924), was located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Another like it had been established in Australia. No doubt, when Kipling included the school in his last will, his thoughts went to the grim experience at Southsea that made him the man he became.

Kipling's autobiography, Something of Myself, came out posthumously in 1937. Kipling did his best to obtain and destroy letters he had sent – to protect his private life. His widow continued the practice but a number of his letters survived and have been published. In 1884 he wrote to Edith Macdonald about his visit to an Afghan Khan, Kizil Bas, who had to stay in Lahore as a prisoner – the Afghan Sirdars had fought against the British. The Khan asks Kipling to write to his "Khubber-Ke-Kargus" (newspaper) and help him to gain again his freedom. He throws a bundle of money to Kipling who refuses to take them. Then the Khan offers a Cashmiri girl, and Kipling loses his temper. Finally he promises three beautiful horse. Kipling resists the temptation, they smoke, drink coffee, and Kipling rides of the city. "I haven't told anyone here of the bribery business because, if I did, some unscrupulous beggar might tell the Khan that he would help him and so lay hold of the money, the lady or, worse still, the horses. Besides I may able to help the old boy respectably and without any considerations."

Kipling's glorification of the "Empire and extension" gained its peak in the poem 'The White Man's Burden' (1899), subtitled 'The United States and and the Philippine Islands'. Written in the aftermath of The Spanish-American War and published originally in the American illustrated monthly McClure's Magazine, it reminded that Britain was not the only expanding expanding imperial power. The poem was a plea to the United States to join Britain in her global mission: "Take up the White Man's burden – / Send forth the best ye breed – / Go bind your sons to exile / To serve your captives' need; / To wait in heavy harness / On fluttered folk and wild – / Your new-caught, sullen peoples, / Half devil and half child." George Orwell, who also spent his early childhood in India, rejected in an essay in New English Weekly (1936) Kipling's view of the world, which he associated with the ignorant and sentimental side of imperialism, but admired the author as a storyteller. However, readers loved Kipling's romantic tales about the adventures of Englishmen in strange and distant parts of the world. Characteristic for Kipling is sympathy for the world of children, satirical attitude toward pompous patriotism, and belief in the blessings and superiority of the British rule, without questioning its basic nature.

For further reading: Rudyard Kipling: A Bibliographical Catalogue by James McG. Stewart (1959); Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Work by Charles Carrington (1955, rev. 1970); The Readers' Guide to Rudyard Kipling's Work, ed. by Roger Lancelyn Green (1961); Kipling and His World by Kingsley Amis (1975); The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling by Angus Wilson (1977); Kipling: Interviews and Recollections, ed. by Harold Orel (1983); A Kipling Companion by Norman Page (1984); Rudyard Kipling by Martin Seymour-Smith (1989); Kipling's Vision by Sukeshi Kamara (1989); East and West: A Biography of Rudyard Kipling by Thomas N. Cross (1991); The Culture Shocks of Rudyard Kipling by W.J. Lohman (1990); The Poetry of Kipling by Ann Parry (1992); Narratives of Empire by Zohreh T. Sullivan (1993); Rudyard Kipling; A Study of the Short Fiction by Helen P. Bauer (1994); Ruduard Kipling; Author of the Jungle Books by Carol Greene et al (1995); Rudyard Kipling in Vermont by Stuart Murray (1997); Quest for Kim by Peter Hopkirk (1997); Rudyard Kipling: A Life by Richard Eder (2000); The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling by David Gilmour (2002); Kipling Sahib: India and the Making of Rudyard Kipling by Charles Allen (2007); Kipling's Children's Literature: Language, Identity, and Constructions of Childhood by Sue Walsh (2010); If: the Untold Story of Kipling's American Years by Christopher Benfey (2019); Kipling the Trickster: Knowingness, Practical Jokes and the Use of Superior Knowledge in Kipling's Short Stories by John Coates (2021); Eurocentrism: History, Identity, White Man's Burden by Michael Wintle (2021) - Museum: Bateman's, Burwash, East Sussex, home of Kipling for over thirty years from 1902 until his death. Open from April to the end of October.

Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man that I am, Gunga Din!
(from 'Gunga Din', 1890)

Selected works:

• Schoolboy Lyrics, 1881
• Echoes: By Two Writers, 1884 (with A. Kipling)
• Quartette, the Christmas Annual of the Civil and Military Gazette, 1885 (by four Anglo-Indian writers, i.e. John Lockwood, Alice, Rudyard and Alice Macdonald Kipling)
• Soldier Tales, 1896 - Sotilaskertomuksia ('Kadoksissa,' 'Kaksi rumpalipoikaa,' 'Hänen oma aviovaimonsa,' 'Wee Willie Winkie," suom. 1911)
  
• Departmental Ditties and Other Verses, 1886
• Plain Tales from the Hills, 1888 (contains 'The Man Who Would Be a King,' 'His Wedded Wife' etc.) - 'Hänen oma aviovaimonsa' (teoksessa Sotilaskertomuksia, suom. 1911) / Intian ylängöiltä (suom. Yrjö Kivimies,1942) - Film 1974, prod. Allied Artists Pictures, Devon/Persky-Bright, Columbia Pictures Corporation, dir. by John Huston, screenplay John Huston, Gladys Hill, starring Sean Connery (as Daniel Dravot), Michael Caine (as Peachy Carnehan), Christopher Plummer (as Rudyard Kipling)
• Soldiers Three, a Collection of Stories Setting Forth Certain Passages in the Lives and Adventures of Privates Terence Mulvaney, Stanley Ortheris, and John Learoyd, etc.,1888 (contains 'The Lost Legion') - Kadonnut legioona: kertomuksia Intiasta ja muualta (suom. Yrjö Kivimies, 1955) - Films: 1951, prod. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, dir. by Tony Garnet, starring Stewart Granger, David Niven, Robert Newton, Walter Pidgeon; 1962, Sergeants 3 (uncredited), prod. Essex Productions, Meadway-Claude Productions Company, dir. by John Sturges, starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
• In Black & White, 1888
• The Story of the Gadsbys, a Tale without a Plot, 1888
• Under the Deodars, 1888
• The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Tales, 1888
• Wee Willie Winkie and Other Child Stories, 1888 - 'Wee Willie Winkie' (teoksessa Sotilaskertomuksia, suom. 1911) - Film 1937, dir. by John Ford, starring Shirley Temple, Victor McLaglen, C. Aubrey Smith, June Lang. "Her admirers - middle-aged men and clergymen - respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire..." (Graham Greene on Shirley Temple's performance, October 28, 1937 in Night and Day, reprinted in The Graham Greene Film Reader, 1993)
• The Light That Failed, 1890 - Valon kadotessa (suom. Aino Malmberg, 1900) - Films: 1939, prod. Paramount Pictures, dir. William A. Wellman, screenplay Robert Carson, starring Ronald Colman, Walter Huston and Muriel Angelus; TV movie 1961, dir. Marc Daniels, with Edward Atienza, Richard Basehart and Eric Berry
• The Courting of Dinah Shadd and Other Stories, 1890
• Indian Tales, 1890 - Kertomuksia Intiasta (suom. 1911) / Kaunein tarina taivaan alla: valittuja kertomuksia suom. Yrjö Kivimies, 1929)
• Mine Own People, 1891
• Life's Handicap, 1891 (including 'The Mark of the Beast') - Pedon merkki ja muita kauhuja (suom. Matti Rosvall, 1994)
• American Notes, 1891
• Letters of Marque, 1891
• The Smith Administration, 1891
• The City of Dreadful Night and Other Places, 1891
• Barrack-Room Ballads, 1892 - Film: Gunga Din 1939, prod. RKO Radio Pictures, dir. by George Stevens, screenplay by Joel Sayre, Fred Guiol, Ben Hecht, Charles McArthur, starring Gary Grant (as Cutter), Victor McLaglen (as MacChesney), Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (as Ballantine), Sam Jaffe (as Gunga Din)
• The Naulahka: A Story of West and East, 1892 (with W. Balestier)
• Many Inventions, 1893
• The Jungle Book, 1894 - Indian viidakoista (suom. Helmi Setälä, 1898; 1909) Viidakkopoika (suom V. Hämeen-Anttila, 1909) / Rikki Tikki Tavi (suom. 1935) / Mowgli: kertomuksia Intian viidakosta (suom. 1935) / Viidakon kirja (suom. Kyllikki Wehanen, 1948) / Viidakkokirjat (suom. Eila Pennanen ja Juhani Jaskari, 1965) / Viidakkokirja (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro, 1992) / Rikki-tikki-tavi (suom. Eila Pennanen ja Juhani Jaskari, 2006) - Films: 1942, dir. by Zoltan Korda, adaptation Laurence Stallings, starring Sabu, Joseph Calleia and John Qualen; animation film in 1967 (Disney Productions), dir. Wolfgang Reitherman, with Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot and Louis Prima; Maugli, animation film in 1973, prod. Soyuzmultfilm, dir. Roman Davydov, with Stepan Bubnov, Lyudmila Kasatkina and Yuri Khrzhanovsky; 2016, dir. Jon Favreau, screenplay Justin Marks, starring Neel Sethi, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba
  
• The Second Jungle Book, 1895 - Indian viidakoista (suom. Helmi Setälä, 1909) / Intian viidakoista (suom. Helmi Krohn, 3. p. 1933) / Viidakkokirjat (suom. Eila Pennanen ja Juhani Jaskari, 1965)
• Out of India. Things I Saw, and Failed to See, in Certain Days and Nights at Jeypore and Elsewhere, 1895 (including “Letters of Marque” and “The City of Dreadful Night')
• Soldier Tales, 1896
• The Seven Seas: Poems, 1896
• The Kipling Birthday Book, 1896 (compiled by Joseph Finn)
  
• The Writings in Prose and Verse of Rudyard Kipling, 1897-1937
  
• Recessional, 1897
• "Captains Courageous": A Story of the Grand Banks, 1897 - Meren sankarit: kertomus isoilta matalikoilta (suom. Hanna Pakkala, 1898) / Meren urhoja (suom. Väinö Jaakkola, 1915; Hannes Korpi-Anttila, 1958) - Films: 1937, prod. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, dir. by Victor Fleming, screenplay John Lee Mahin, Marc Connelly, Dale Van Every, starring Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, Freddie Bartholomew, Mickey Rooney; TV film 1996, dir. Michael Anderson, with Robert Urich, Kenny Vadas and Kaj-Erik Eriksen
• The Day's Work, 1898 (contains 'William the Conqueror') - Päivän työ (suom. Yrjö Kivimies, 1925) / Vilhelm Valloittaja: kertomuksia Intiasta (suom. Eino Kaltimo, 1925)
• An Almanax of Twelve Sports, 1898 (by William Nicholson; words by Rudyard Kipling)
  
• A Fleet in Being: Notes of Two Trips with the Channel Squadron, 1898
• Stalky & Co., 1899 - Minä ja kumppanit (suom. Yrjö Kivimies, 1962)
• From the Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel, 1899
• Recessional and Other Poems, 1899
• The White Man's Burden, 1899
  
• The Absent-Minded Beggar, 1899 (song for voice and piano in D major (with chorus ad lib); words by Rudyard Kipling)
• The Kipling Reader: Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling, 1900
• With Number Three, 1900
• Occasional Poems, 1900
• The Science of Rebellion. A Tract for the Times, etc., 1901
  
• Kim, 1901 - Kim: "koko maailman pikku ystävä" (suom. Hannes Leiviskä, 1917) / Kim (suom. Eeva Heikkinen, 1971) / Kim: koko maailman ystävä (suom. Tuikku Ljungberg, 2009) - Films: 1950, dir. by Victor Saville, starring Errol Flynn, Dean Stockwell, Paul Lukas, Robert Douglas; TV film 1984, dir. John Howard Davies, with Peter O'Toole, Bryan Brown and John Rhys-Davies
• Just So Stories, 1902 - Alkutarinoita (suom. Jaakko Anhava, 2013)
  
• The Five Nations, 1903
• Traffics and Discoveries, 1904
• The Muse among the Motors, 1904
• Puck of Pook's Hill, 1906 (with illustrations by H. R. Millar)
• Collected Verse of Rudyard Kipling, 1907
• Letters to the Family, 1908
• Actions and Reactions, 1909
• Abaft the Funnel, 1909 (authorized edition)
  
• Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, 1909 (edited by Mary E. Burt and W. T. Chapin)
• Rewards and Fairies, 1910
• The Female of the Species: A Study in Natural History, 1911
  
• A History of England, 1911 (with C.R.L. Fletcher, verse only)
• Songs from Books, 1912
• "The Harbour Watch," 1913 (a play in one act)
  
• The New Army, 1914
• France at War, 1915
• The Fringes of the Fleet, 1915
• Tales of "The Trade," 1916
• Sea Warfare, 1916
• The War in the Mountains, 1917
• A Diversity of Creatures, 1917
• The Eyes of Asia, 1918
• To Fighting Americans, 1918
• Twenty Poems, 1918
• The Graves of the Fallen, 1919
• They Years Between, 1919
• Verse: Inclusive Edition, 1919
• Letters of Travel (1892-1913), 1920
• Selected Stories, 1921 (edited by William Lyon Phelps)
  
• A Kipling Anthology: Prose, 1922
• A Kipling Anthology: Verse, 1923
  
• Land and Sea Tales for Boys and Girls, 1923
• The Irish Guards in the Great War, 1923 (edited and compiled by Rudyard Kipling)
• Songs for Youth from Collected Verse, 1924 (with illustrations by Leo Bates)
  
• A Choice of Songs: from the Verse of Rudyard Kipling, 1925
• Works, 1925-26 (26 vols.)
• Debits and Credits, 1926
• Sea and Sussex from Rudyard Kipling's Verse, 1926 (illustrated by Donald Maxwell; with an introductory poem by R. Kipling)
• On Dry-Cow Fishing as a Fine Art, 1926
  
• St. Andrews, 1926 (with Walter de la Mare)
• Songs of the Sea, 1927
• A Book of Words, 1928
• The One Vol. Kipling, 1928
• The Lamentable Comedy of Willow Wood, 1929
  
• Selected Stories, 1929
• Poems 1886-1929, 1929 (3 vols.)
• Thy Servand, a Dog, Told by Boots, 1930 (illustrated by G. L. Stampa)
• Humorous Tales, 1931 (illustrated by Reginald Cleaver)
  
• Selected Poems from Rudyard Kipling, 1931
• East of Suez: Being a Selection of Eastern Verses from the Poetical Works of Rudyard Kipling, 1931
• Aninal Stories, 1932 (illustrated by Stuart Tresilian)
  
• Limits and Renewals, 1932
• All the Mowgli Stories, 1933 (illustrated by Stuart Tresilian)
• Souvenirs of France, 1933
• Collected Dog Stories, 1934
• A Kipling Pageant, 1935
• Ham and the Porcupine, 1935
• Verse: Inclusive Edition, 1885-1932, 1936
  
• Something of Myself, 1937
• Complete Works, 1937-39 (35 vols.)
• Sixty Poems, 1939
• More Selected Stories, 1940
• Verse: Definitive Edition, 1940
• A Kipling Treasury: Stories and Poems, 1940
• So Shall Ye Reep: Poems for These Days, 1941
• Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling, 1941 (28 vols.)
• A Choice of Kipling's Verse, 1941 (ed. T.S. Eliot)
• Kipling on the Japanese: An Unpublished Letter Written at the Time of the Russo-Japanese War to William Joshua Harding R.N., 2 September 1903, 1943
  
• Twenty-One Tales: Selected from the Works of R. Kipling, 1946
• Ten Stories, 1947
• A Choice of Kipling's Prose, 1952 (ed. by W. Somerset Maugham)
• Kipling: A Selection of His Stories and Poems, 1956 (2 vols., by John Beecroft ; illustrated by Richard M. Powers)
  
• Treasury of Short Stories, 1957
• The Kipling Reader, 1958 (adapted and edited by Salibelle Royster)
• Kipling, 1960 (selected and introduced by Edward Parone)
  
• The Best Short Stories, 1961
• The Kipling Sampler: Selections from a Great Storyteller’s Best, 1962 (edited, with an introduction, by Alexander Greendale)
• Famous Tales of India, 1962
• Letters from Japan, 1962
• Pearls from Kipling, 1963
• A Kipling Anthology, 1964 (edited by W.G. Bebbington)
  
• Phantoms and Fantasies: 20 Tales, 1965 (illustrated by Burt Silverman)
• Rudyard Kipling to Rider Haggard, the Record of a Friendship, 1965 (ed. M. Cohen)
  
• The Best of Kipling, 1968
• Stories and Poems, 1970 (edited with a biographical note and an introduction by Roger Lancelyn Green)
  
• Short Stories, 1971 (2 vols., selected by Andrew Rutherford)
  
• Twenty-One Tales, 1972
• The Complete Barrack-Room Ballads, 1973 (edited by Charles Carrington)
  
• Tales of East and West, 1973 (selected by Bernard Bergonzi and illustrated by Charles Raymond for the members of the Limited Editions Club)
• Kipling's English History: Poems, 1974 (chosen and presented by Marghanita Laski)
• Kipling: A Selection, 1977 (by James Cochrane)
  
• Kipling's Horace, 1978
• American Notes: Rudyard Kipling's West, 1981 (edited and with an introduction by Arrell Morgan Gibson)
  
• The Portable Kipling, 1982 (edited and with an introduction by Irving Howe)
• 'O Beloved Kids': Rudyard Kipling's Letters to His Children, 1983 (ed. Eliot L. Gilbert)
• Early Verse by Rudyard Kipling 1879-1889: Unpublished, Uncollected and Rarely Collected Poems, 1986 (edited by Andrew Rutherford)
• Kipling's India: Uncollected Sketches 1884-88, 1987 (edited by Thomas Pinney)
  
• Kipling's Kingdom: Twenty-Five of Rudyard Kipling's Best Indian Stories; Known and Unknown, 1987 (selected and introduced by Charles Allen)
• The Illustrated Kipling, 1987 (edited by Neil Philip)
  
• A Choice of Kipling's Prose, 1987 (ed. Craig Raine)
  
• Kiplings's Japan: Collected Writings, 1988 (edited by Hugh Cortazzi and George Webb)
  
• Kipling's Lost World, 1989 (edited and with an introduction by Harry Ricketts)
• Rudyard Kipling: Something of Myself and Other Biographical Writings, 1990 (ed. by Thomas Pinney)
• The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, 1990-2004 (6 vols., edited by Thomas Pinney)
  
• With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D., 1998 (introduction by Thomas Pinney; illustrations by Vincent Perez)
• 'If-' and Other Poems, 2002 (selected and introduced by Dominique Enright
• Kipling's America: Travel Letters, 1889-1895, 2003 (edited by D.H. Stewart)
  
• Kipling Abroad: Traffics and Discoveries from Burma to Brazil, 2010 (introduced and edited by Andrew Lycett)
  
• Cambridge Edition of the Poems of Rudyard Kipling, 2012 (edited by Thomas Pinney)
  
• Stories and Poems, 2015 (edited with an introduction and notes by Daniel Karlin)