Rudyard Kipling

Contribution to History

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 and began his career as a young newspaperman in British India. His stories and poems, from The Jungle Book to Kim to “If—,” made him one of the most widely read writers in English. In 1907 he became the first English-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and at 41 he is still its youngest winner.

His son John was killed in the First World War. Kipling then joined the Imperial War Graves Commission and chose the words “Their Name Liveth For Evermore” and “Known unto God” for the graves of the fallen.

Why It Matters Today

Those words still stand in war cemeteries around the world. Many readers today also question Kipling’s views on empire, and both his gifts and his blind spots deserve an honest look. His poem about his first lodge captures a hope still worth holding, that people of every background can meet as equals:

The Masonic Thread

Kipling was initiated by dispensation, below the usual age, in Lodge Hope and Perseverance No. 782 in Lahore on April 5, 1886, and was raised that December. By his own account, its members came from at least four creeds. Seeing the person behind the title is something any of us can practice.

Sources

• https://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/kipling_r/kipling_r.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling
• https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Seven_Seas/The_Mother-Lodge
• Portrait image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rudyard_Kipling_(portrait).jpg (Public domain)