The Jungle Book [Hardcover]

Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

The Jungle Bookshows Kipling's writing for children at its best. It is a collection of short stories and poems revolving round the boy Mowgli, who was raised by a pack of wolves in India. We meet the tiger Shere Khan who attacked and drove off Mowgli's parent, Bagheera, the black panher, Baloo, 'the sleepy brown bear', and the evil python, Kaa. Other stories include Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, The White Seal and Toomai of the Elephants, and the book contains the original illustrations of J. Lockwood Kipling (Rudyard's father) and W. H. Drake.

With an Afterword by David Stuart Davies.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was named after the Staffordshire reservoir near Leek beside which his parents became engaged. He was born in India, and spent the first six years of his life there, acquiring Hindustani as a second language and living in a bungalow like that inThe Jungle Book. He was then sent to a boarding house in England with his sister Alice, where he had a miserable time until he was sent to The United Services College at Westward Ho! in Devon, the model for Stalky & Co. He left school at sixteen to return to India and work onThe Civil and Military Gazettein Lahore, and his familiarity with all classes of society provided him with material forBarrack Room BalladsandPlain Tales from the Hills. In 1889 he returned to England and in 1891 published his novelThe Light That Failed, and married Caroline (Carrie) Balestier the following year. They returned to her home Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote the two Jungle Books and Captains Courageous. In 1896 the family returned to England, where Kipling continlĂL