The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book is an 1894 collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling, published in its first form by Macmillan.

Most of the central characters are animals, and the most important human figure is Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves. The setting is a dry forest in India, with Seoni in Madhya Pradesh named repeatedly as a location. Alongside Mowgli's stories the book includes the tale of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal, which share the structure of a protagonist who survives by understanding the rules of a hostile environment. The animals around Mowgli are individuated rather than left as types: Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear are characters in their own right, and several of the stories turn on the boy being taught the rules of the place rather than being saved by strength.

Kipling's themes are described as abandonment followed by fostering, echoing his own childhood, together with law and freedom. The stories are not natural history and not a study of survival in the Darwinian sense; they present human archetypes in animal form, teaching respect for authority and knowledge of one's place while also questioning the law of the jungle they describe. That combination is why the book is read as literature rather than only as a children's collection.