The Jungle Book

"No man's cub can run with the people of the Jungle," howled Shere Khan. "Give him to me!"

When Father Wolf and Mother Wolf find a man-cub in the jungle, they anger the greedy tiger Shere Khan by refusing to surrender it to his jaws, and rear the child as their own. But when little Mowgli grows up, the pack can no longer defend him. He must learn the secret of fire, and with the help of his friends Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear, he faces his nemesis at last.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in Bombay in December 1865. He returned to India from England shortly before his seventeenth birthday, to work as a journalist first on the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, then on the Pioneer at Allahabad. The poems and stories he wrote over the next seven years laid the foundation of his literary reputation, and soon after his return to London in 1889 he found himself world-famous. Throughout his life his works enjoyed great acclaim and popularity, but he came to seem increasingly controversial because of his political opinions, and it has been difficult to reach literary judgements unclouded by partisan feeling.