Kipling's letters in search for son sell for £1,250

Rudyard Kipling is perhaps best known for writing The Jungle Book, Kim and Just So Stories

Letters sent by author Rudyard Kipling appealing for information about his son, who went missing on the Western Front during World War One, have sold for more than £1,200 at auction.

The letters date back to 1915, after Second Lieutenant John Kipling was wounded and declared missing during the Battle of Loos.

A quote from one of the letters reads: "My only hope about knowing about my son's fate is from the evidence of the men who fought near him on the action of the 27th September."

They were sold for £1,250 to an anonymous buyer from Dubai by Hansons Auctioneers in Derbyshire.

Kipling is best known for his poems and stories set in India during the period of British imperial rule, with his multiple works including The Jungle Book duology.

Second Lieutenant John Kipling went missing in 1915, prompting his father to write letters in his search for information on what happened to him

His son's Irish Guards battalion was advancing towards Chalk Pit Wood on 27 September 1915 when he was wounded.

Kipling was living at Bateman's in Burwash, East Sussex, when he wrote the letters to the City of London Military Hospital.

In the letters, he explained there were no reports of him being a prisoner or in hospital, adding: "We are anxious to get the evidence of the men who were wounded in the same action and who are now in England, before they are separated. This must be my excuse of troubling you."

Kipling died in 1936 without finding out what had happened to his son.

His body was eventually found in 1992 and is believed to be in plot seven in St Mary's Advanced Dressing Station Cemetery, Haisnes, near Loos.

While Kipling never wrote directly about losing his son, it was thought it influenced his poem My Boy Jack, which includes the line: "Have you news of my boy Jack... has anyone else had word of him?"