The Second Jungle Book.

KIPLING, Rudyard.

$750.00

Item Number: 119977

London: Macmillan and Co., 1895.

First edition of Kipling’s Second Jungle Book. Octavo, original blue cloth with gilt titles to the spine and gilt vignette to the front panel, all edges gilt, pictorial title pages, illustrated. In near fine condition with light rubbing to the extremities. Contemporary ownership inscription.

Kipling's Jungle Books center on the story of Mowgli, an orphaned 'man-cub' who is raised in the jungle of India by wolves where he comes to learn the Laws of the Jungle. A major theme throughout the books is abandonment followed by fostering, as in the life of Mowgli, echoing Kipling's own childhood. Another is law vs. freedom; the stories are not about animal behavior, but about human archetypes in animal form. The books remain popular to this day and have been adapted several times for film and other media, including the classic Walt Disney 1967 animation and its 2016 remake.