Jungle Book: Illustrated

by Rudyard Kipling, Murat Ukray (Illustrator)

Overview

  The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by English Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–94. The original publications contain illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his childhood there. After about ten years in England, he went back to India and worked there for about six-and-a-half years.

  These stories were written when Kipling lived in Vermont. There is evidence that it was written for his daughter Josephine, who died in 1899 aged six, after a rare first edition of the book with a poignant handwritten note by the author to his young daughter was discovered at the National Trust's Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire in 2010.

  The tales in the book (and also those in The Second Jungle Book which followed in 1895, and which includes five further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. The verses of The Law of the Jungle, for example, lay down rules for the safety of individuals, families and communities. Kipling put in them nearly everything he knew or "heard or dreamed about the Indian jungle." Other readers have interpreted the work as allegories of the politics and society of the time. The best-known of them are the three stories revolving around the adventures of an abandoned "man cub" Mowgli who is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle. The most famous of the other stories are probably "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", the story of a heroic mongoose, and "Toomai of the Elephants", the tale of a young elephant-handler. As with much of Kipling's work, each of the stories is preceded by a piece of verse, and succeeded by another.

  Characters:
Akela – An Indian Wolf
Bagheera – A melanistic (black) panther
Baloo— A Sloth Bear
Bandar-log – A tribe of monkeys
Chil – A kite (renamed "Rann" in US editions)
Chuchundra – A Muskrat
Darzee – A tailorbird
Father Wolf – The Father Wolf who raised Mowgli as his own cub
Grey brother – One of Mother and Father Wolf's cubs
Hathi – An Indian Elephant
Ikki – An Asiatic Brush-tailed Porcupine (mentioned only)
Kaa – Indian Python
Karait – Common Krait
Kotick – A White Seal
Mang – A Bat
Mor – An Indian Peafowl
Mowgli – Main character, the young jungle boy
Nag – A male Black cobra
Nagaina – A female King cobra, Nag's mate
Raksha – The Mother wolf who raised Mowgli as own cub
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi – An Indian Mongoose
Sea Catch – A Northern fur seal and Kotick's father
Sea Cow – A Steller's Sea Cow
Sea Vitch – A Walrus
Shere Khan— A Royal Bengal Tiger
Tabaqui – An Indian Jackal

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9786155564079
Publisher:	PublishDrive
Publication date:	04/06/2015
Series:	Jungle Book: Illustrated
Sold by:	PUBLISHDRIVE KFT
Format:	eBook
Pages:	218
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 - 18 January 1936) was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He is chiefly remembered for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India and his tales for children. 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. Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including The Jungle Book (a collection of stories which includes "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"), Just So Stories (1902), Kim (1901) (a tale of adventure), many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888); and his poems, including "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), and "If-" (1910). He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story"; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works are said to exhibit "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".
Kipling was one of the most popular writers in England, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I have ever known." In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and to date he remains its youngest recipient. Among other honours, he was sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, all of which he declined.

Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, to Alice Kipling (née MacDonald) and (John) Lockwood Kipling. Alice (one of four remarkable Victorian sisters) was a vivacious woman about whom a future Viceroy of India would say, "Dullness and Mrs. Kipling cannot exist in the same room." Lockwood Kipling, a sculptor and pottery designer, was the Principal and Professor of Architectural Sculpture at the newly founded Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art in Bombay.