English literature the book is designed to acquaint students with the main outlines

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or w'£,lk with kings - nor lose the common touch, If neilher foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And - which is more- you’ll be a Man, my son!

Kipling returned from America to England and lived in a little Sussex village. During the South African war (1899-1902) Kipling supported the policy of British expansion. His beliefin empire and his admiration for force damaged his literary reputation. But still he was highly appreciated as a talented master of fiction and poetry. In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He is the first Englishman and the first writer who has received this prize.

The death ofhis son during World War I affected him strongly

and made him almost silent. His works of later period “Mary Postage” (1915) and “The Gardener” (1926) evidently show his hatred of war.

A great artist and realist, Rudyard Kipling, died on January 17, 1936 when he w'as at work on a collection of autobiographi­ cal notes. The notes were published a year after his death under the title “Something of Myself’.

Questions and Tasks

1. During what period is Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” written?

2. 
   Whom is Kipling’s poem ‘If’ dedicated to? Do you like this poem? If “yes” or “no”, comment on your answer.
   
3. 
   Did Kipling support the policy of British expansion?
   

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

George Bernard Show is an outstanding English playwright, one of the greatest satirists of the twentieth century. He was born in Dublin in an impoverished middle-class family. Until fourteen he attended a college, and from 1871 was employed in a land agent’s office. In 1876 he went to London, where he became a journalist and wrote music and dramatic critics for various peri­ odicals. He was always in the midst of political life in Britain and

took an active