Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865 – January 18, 1936) was a British poet, novelist, and short story writer notable for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India and for his children’s stories. He was born in Bombay to a family that thought of themselves as “Anglo-Indian”. His father taught sculpture and design and his mother was a notably vivacious woman. He was sent to England as a youth to be exposed to British customs and education, attending preparatory school United Services College in Devon. Unable to afford to attend Oxford or obtain a scholarship, he returned to India as a young man to write for the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, now part of Pakistan, where he found his calling as a writer.  He started publishing stories and decided to relocate in London, traveling the Pacific and crossing North America in the process. In 1892 he married Carrie Balestier, an American, and relocated to the family property near Brattleboro, Vermont, where he built a house modeled on Mughal architecture and wrote The Jungle Book, Captains Courageous, and other stories and poems. He returned to England in 1896, settling first in Devon and then acquired Bateman’s in Sussex in 1902, an ancient house built in 1634 with a mill and 33 acres, where he remained for the rest of his life.