Автор Kipling Rudyard

Originally from The day's work (1898)

This edition from The works of Rudyard Kipling, vol. XIII, The day’s work, Part 1 (1911)

Description

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, first published in 1902, is now considered to be a classic of children’s literature. The twelve tales included are all humorous “origin” stories purporting to tell how certain animals gained their distinctive features. For example, “The Elephant’s Child” tells how the elephant gained its long trunk because of a baby elephant having its nose pulled and stretched by a crocodile.

The stories originated as bedtime tales Kipling invented for his daughter and told to her each night. The stories had to be told in exactly the same words each night—“just so”—or his daughter would complain.

Early editions of Just So Stories were illustrated in black and white by Kipling himself, which lends the collection a certain charm. We have reproduced these illustrations in the Standard Ebooks edition of the book.

Description

The Jungle Book is a short collection of stories published by Kipling in various magazines between 1893 and 1894. Kipling spent both his early years and his late teenage years in India, and that upbringing is front and center in these stories—despite them being written while he was living in Vermont, in the United States.

The stories are fable-like, with most of them centering on the lives of anthropomorphised jungle animals and a few focused on human characters in India. The stories were popular from the start, and have since been adapted in countless ways in print, screen, and other media.

Description

Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim, published in 1901, tells the story of Kimberly O’Hara (“Kim”), the orphaned son of an Anglo-Irish soldier, who grows up as a street-urchin on the streets of Lahore in India during the time of the British Raj. Knowing little of his parentage, he is as much a native as his companions, speaking Hindi and Urdu rather than English, cunning and street-wise.

At about the age of twelve, Kim encounters an old Tibetan lama on a pilgrimage in search of a holy river. He decides to fall in with the lama on his travels, and becomes in essence the old man’s disciple. Not long after, Kim is captured at an encampment of British soldiers under suspicion of being a thief. His parentage is discovered and the officers decide he must be raised as a “Sahib” (an Englishman) and sent off to school. The interest of the British officers in Kim is not entirely disinterested, however, as they see his potential for acting as a courier and spy as part of their “Great Game” of espionage against their bitter rivals the Russians, and ensure that he is trained accordingly.

Kim is a well-loved book, often being listed as one of the best English-language novels. Its depiction of the India of the time, its varied races, religions, customs and scenery is detailed, rich and sympathetic. And the manoeuverings of the players in the Great Game make for an entertaining adventure story.