Christopher Benfey Knihy

Rudyard Kipling once towered over not just English literature, but indeed the entire literary world. In 1907, at just forty-two, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming its youngest winner and the first in the English language. Today, however, when he is read, if indeed he is read at all, it is regarding the history of colonial India, his birthplace and the setting of some his most famous work, and to a lesser extent England, his ancestral home. But, in fact, Kipling's most prodigious and creative period took place in America, which was also his preferred home. It was here, on the crest of a Vermont hillside overlooking the Connecticut River, that Kipling wrote both The Jungle Book and Captains Courageous. And here where his ascent to fame was most rapid. Almost certainly, he would have stayed in the United States, understanding himself not just to be an American but a particularly American artist, had a family dispute not forced his departure in 1896