The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories written by Rudyard Kipling.The tales in the book (and also those in The Second Jungle Book which followed in 1895, and which includes five further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. The verses of The Law of the Jungle, for example, lay down rules for the safety of individuals, families and communities. Kipling put in them nearly everything he knew or u0027heard or dreamed about the Indian jungle.u0027 The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–94. The original publications contain illustrations, some by the authoru0027s father, John Lockwood Kipling. Rudyard Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his childhood there. After about ten years in England, he went back to India and worked there for about six-and-a-half years. These stories were written when Kipling lived in Naulakha, the home he built in Dummerston, Vermont, in the United States. Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kiplingu0027s works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including u0027The Man Who Would Be Kingu0027 (1888). His poems include u0027Mandalayu0027 (1890), u0027Gunga Dinu0027 (1890), u0027The Gods of the Copybook Headingsu0027 (1919), u0027The White Manu0027s Burdenu0027 (1899), and u0027If—u0027 (1910). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his childrenu0027s books are classics of childrenu0027s literature, and one critic described his work as exhibiting u0027a versatile and luminous narrative giftu0027. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: u0027Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known.u0027In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined.