The Light That Failed is the first novel by the Nobel Prize-winning English author Rudyard Kipling, first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in January 1891.

[3] The story begins with Dick and Maisie as orphan children in a seaside boarding house under the care of Mrs. Jennet (a sadist drawn from Kipling's own childhood experience with a Mrs. Holloway).

He meets a war correspondent named Torpenhow who, witnessing his skill, arranges for Dick to be hired by the syndicate that he works for.

His war sketches have drawn attention in England and when his former employers try to withhold his submitted works, Dick bullies their representative into returning them.

While discussing her work, Dick begins to argue with Maisie about her attempt to paint the "Melancolia" from the book The City of Dreadful Night.

When he returns to his room, he discovers that Torpenhow has brought in a pretty young prostitute named Bessie, whom he found collapsed in the hall.

Dick hits upon his notion for the "Melancolia" who he models on Bessie but discovers to his horror that he is going blind due to a past battle injury.

He still manages to complete the painting a week after Torpenhow returns, relying on whisky to help his failing vision.

When news arrives of a new campaign in Sudan, Torpenhow visits Maisie in Paris and persuades her to meet Dick in the hope that she will look after him.

[4] He focuses also on art and the role of the artist, and Dick's paintings form a central feature, especially the Melancolia which is ultimately destroyed.

[4] Kipling especially derides the commercialisation of art when Dick is chastised by his friends for his arrogance at his successes and love for money.

He contrasts it with Dick's sarcasm for having to clean a graphic portrait of a Sudanese rifleman to appeal to the general public.

[6] Kipling also shows the effect of childhood abuse with Mrs. Jennett's treatment of Dick causing him to become a "natural liar" and "unkempt in body and savage in soul."

[5] The novel also deals with blindness and Dick's slide into despair and helplessness due to the loss of his ability to work and the resulting abandonment by Maisie.

"[12] A play by George Fleming, starring Johnston Forbes-Robertson, his wife Gertrude Elliott, and Sydney Valentine, was first staged in the West End from February to April 1903[13] and moved on to Broadway in November, making the story more famous.

It was also adapted for television in the US in 1961 by the Breck Shampoo Company, with Richard Basehart starring as Heldar and Susan Harrison as Maisie.