The Light That Failed

Dick Heldar, a brilliant young war artist, makes his name sketching the British campaign in the Sudan, where he receives a sword cut to the head. Back in London, famous and successful, he falls in love again with Maisie, his childhood companion, now a struggling painter more interested in her own art than in him. Then Dick begins to lose his sight, a late result of the old wound, and races to finish his masterpiece before darkness falls.

Published in 1891, it was Rudyard Kipling's first novel, and he wrote two endings for it, one happy and one tragic. Its picture of the artist's life and of war correspondents drew on his own early fame in London. Read Plain Tales from the Hills, and see his life.

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was born in Bombay, sent to England at five to an unhappy foster home, and returned to India at sixteen to work as a journalist in Lahore. His stories of Anglo-Indian life made him famous in London in his twenties.

The Jungle Book, written in Vermont, Kim and Just So Stories became classics, and in 1907 he became the first English-language writer to win the Nobel Prize. His poem 'If—' is still widely quoted, though his support for empire makes him a controversial figure today. His only son was killed in the First World War.