Short stories
The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling · 1894
Opening lines
It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
In the Seeonee hills, Shere Khan, a lame tiger, misses his prey by leaping onto the campfire of woodcutters; a naked child, who can barely walk, arrives at the den of a pair of wolves. Mother Wolf takes him in among her cubs and drives off the tiger, who swears that the child will end up between his jaws. At the council of the pack, two voices speak for him: the bear Baloo, who teaches the Law to the wolf cubs, and the panther Bagheera, who pays for his admission with a freshly killed bull. The other stories concern a white seal, a mongoose, a little elephant driver and his elephants.
Context
The stories first appeared in a magazine in 1893 and 1894 and were written in Vermont, where their author had settled near the family of his American wife: begun in a rented cottage where his eldest daughter was born, they were continued in the house he had built. The copy he gave to this daughter was found in 2010, with a handwritten note that the book belonged to her and had been written for her. A few illustrations in the original edition are by his father. A quarrel over a meadow with his brother-in-law, pushed to the point of threats and a lawsuit, drove the family out of America in 1896.
Who it is for
Seven short tales, each followed by a poem, to be read separately; only three concern the child raised by wolves.
Prizes and reception
Its author received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, and to this day remains its youngest laureate.
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