Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was born in India but educated in England. When he returned to India at the age of seventeen, Kipling worked as a journalist on a British newspaper. During this time, he began writing his first stories about life in India, stories that were to make him famous. "Rikki-tikki-tavi" is a story in one of Kipling's most popular works, The Jungle Book, his first collection of animal stories. Like the animal characters in "Rikki-tikki-tavi," the animals throughout The Jungle Book personify many human characteristics and teach readers about life experiences. In 1907, Kipling became the first English writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.