First published in 1894, ‘The Jungle Book’ is a collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling that he wrote while he lived in India. ‘The Jungle Book’ has remained popular, partly through its many adaptations for film and other media.
Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or ‘man-cub’ Mowgli, who is raised in the jungle by wolves. The stories are set in a forest in India; one place mentioned repeatedly is ‘Seonee’ (Seoni), in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.
The stories tell mostly of Mowgli and learns self-sufficiency and wisdom from the jungle animals. The book describes the social life of the wolf pack and, more fancifully, the justice and natural order of life in the jungle.