The Jungle Books.

KIPLING, Rudyard.

Item Number: 121799

Garden City and New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1948.

The Book Club edition of Kipling’s Jungle Books. Octavo, two volumes, original cloth. Illustrations by Albert Watson. Foreword by Nelson Doubleday. Near fine in very good dust jackets. Book design by Oscar Ogg. Author photograph by Elliot and Frey, Ltd.

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.