Rudyard Kipling 
France at War – On the Frontier of Civilization 

This early work by Rudyard Kipling was originally published in 1915 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Kipling began working for the War Propaganda Bureau in late 1914. The impressions displayed in ‘France at War – On the Frontier of Civilization’ were written after a tour of the Western Front in 1915. Rudyard Kipling was born in 1865 in Bombay, India, where he lived until the age of six, when his family took him back to England for schooling. Between 1882 and 1886, Kipling wrote profusely. In 1892, Kipling married Caroline Balestier and the couple moved to Vermont. Their two daughters were born there and is also where Kipling wrote his famous The Jungle Book (1894). Despite having turned down many honours in his lifetime, including a knighthood and the poet laureateship, in 1907, he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first English author to be so honoured. In 1915, his son, John, went missing in action during the Battle of Loos. Having played a major role in getting the chronically short-sighted John accepted for military service, Kipling had great difficulty accepting his son’s death and subsequently wrote an account of his regiment, The Irish Guards in the Great War.