The Light That Failed is a novel by Rudyard Kipling that was first published in 1890 in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine dated January 1891. Most of the novel is set in London, but many important events throughout the story occur in Sudan or India. The Light that Failed follows the life of Dick Heldar, a painter who goes blind. It was made into a 1940 film starring Ronald Colman as Heldar with Muriel Angelus, Ida Lupino, and Walter Huston. Joseph Rudyard Kipling (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.