Rudyard Kipling was the barrack-room balladeer and the unrivalled poet laureate of the common man. He was born in Bombay in 1865, and after schooling in England he returned to India and started his writing career. He settled in Sussex after the Boer War and concentrated on verse and short stories. In her foreword to this edition of Kipling's verse, M.M. Kaye, author of "The Far Pavilions", introduces readers to Kipling's India and looks at the influences in his life that were responsible for his becoming the literary lion of the Empire.