Kipling, Rudyard: The Light That Failed. V1. 10 Nov 2012
 

Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( /ˈrʌdjəd ˈkɪplɪŋ/ RUD-yəd KIP-ling; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist chiefly remembered for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He was born in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old. Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including The Jungle Book (a collection of stories which includes "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"), Just So Stories (1902) (1894), Kim (1901) (a tale of adventure), many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888) and his poems, including "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The White Man's Burden" (1899) and "If—" (1910). He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story"; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works are said to exhibit "a versatile and luminous narrative gift"

Novel by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1890. The book, which includes autobiographical elements, describes the youth and manhood of Dick Heldar and traces his efforts as a war correspondent and artist whose sketches of British battles in the Sudan become popular. When he returns to London, he begins painting his masterpiece, racing against time because a battle wound has caused his eyesight to progressively fail. Kipling wrote two separate endings to The Light That Failed, a happy ending for the version published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in January 1890 and an unhappy ending for the version published in book form a few months later.