Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in India on 30 December 1865. He was sent back to England when he was seven years old but returned to India in 1882 to work as the assistant editor of the Civil & Military Gazette in Lahore. He published poetry and stories in newspapers but it was the publication of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888 that brought him his first major success. His most famous works are Barrack-room Ballads (1892), The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and Just So Stories (1902). The Just So Stories were written for his children and are addressed to his six-year-old daughter Josephine, his 'best beloved', who died of pneumonia in 1899. Rudyard Kipling died on 18 January 1936.

"Loved by children and adults alike" Daily Mail "The original stories of The Jungle Book surpass all rollicking Disneyfied expectations. On one level, the Mancub's education is pure entertainment; on another, the jungle is symbolic of Kipling's philosophy of life, a moral playground in which the young learn to swing on the vines of life" The Times "One of the greatest writers that Britain has ever produced" -- Griff Rhys Jones "The incantatory text of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Books still rewards reading aloud" Sunday Times "[Its] lasting power to enchant lies not in a contrived simplicity of language - it makes no concession to the age or verbal dexterity of the reader - but rather to its uncanny understanding of the adult within every child" -- Beryl Bainbridge