The Jungle Book

Story

The Jungle Book is a collection of animal tales largely set in India. The best known feature the adventures of Mowgli, a boy or ‘man-cub’ raised by wolves, and his friends Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear and enemies Kaa the python and Shere Khan the tiger.

Why we chose it

The Jungle Book is an enduring children’s classic, loved by generations. The stories are fables which use ‘the law of the jungle’ to teach moral lessons about justice and respect, loyalty and kindness. Although widely praised for Kipling’s vivid storytelling and beautiful prose, the tales are also criticised for embodying the colonial attitudes of his time.

Where it came from

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, novelist and poet. He grew up in India where his father was an artist and teacher.

As a child Kipling loved the books of Robert Louis Stevenson and H. Rider Haggard as well as Indian fables such as the Panchatantra. Years later, when he and his family were living in Vermont, USA, Kipling wrote these stories for his daughter Josephine. They were first published in magazines, some with illustrations by Kipling’s father.

Where it went next

The Jungle Book has appeared in over 500 print editions and 100 audiobooks in more than 36 languages. It influenced themes in the Scout movement founded by Kipling’s friend, Robert Baden-Powell. Kipling declined a Knighthood but accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The best-known film adaptation is the 1967 Disney animation which sanitised the Mowgli stories and added upbeat songs.

There have since been two live-action films, Disney’s 2016 remake of their 1967 film and Warner Brothers’ Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, in 2018.

Kipling has inspired many writers from Robert Heinlein whose Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) features a child raised by Martians, and Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (2008) about a boy brought up in a cemetery by its dead inhabitants.

Associated stories

The Second Jungle Book appeared in 1895. Kipling also published The Just So Stories in 1902, a collection of origin stories about how different animals ‘came to be’.