The Jungle Book 
Rudyard Kipling
Illustrated by Maurice & Edward Detmold
Preloved, vintage hardcover, printed 1993 with dust jacket. Some wear & fading to the cover.
IT IS NOW A HUNDRED YEARS since the first
publication of The Jungle Book by Macmillan and Co. This magical mixture of adventure, fable and allegory is perhaps the best-known collection of animal stories ever written.
But they are more than simple tales. The jungle in which Mowgli lives is populated with creatures in whom animal and human characteristics are brilliantly contrived. In this very real, often dangerous, world Mowgli grows up, learning the Law of the jungle from his animal guardians - Akela the wolf, Baloo the fatherly bear, Bagheera the wise panther and Kaa the tough, clever python. Even their enemy, the brutal, bullying tiger Shere Khan, has something to teach him.
In The Jungle Book, Kipling skilfully tempers morality with excitement, as in the story of the never-say-die mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and his life-and-death struggle with the cobra; and the mystery of animal society is hauntingly conveyed in the tale of Toomai, the boy who saw the elephant dance.
The superb water-colours of Maurice and Edward
Detmold, which Macmillan commissioned and published as a portfolio of prints in 1903, are used to illustrate this new edition.