Rudyard Kipling and the Nobel Prize

This is simply not true. Rudyard Kipling was the first UK citizen to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the first writer in English. But the first ever winner, in 1901, was the French poet and essayist Sully Prudhomme.

The first seven Literature laureates (the prize was shared in 1904) included two French writers, one German, one Norwegian, on Spanish, one Polish and one Italian. I like to think of myself as reasonably well–read, but I've barely heard of any of them.

You can see a list of them here (on Wikipedia, naturally).