The Jungle Books (Penguin Classics)
Rudyard Kiplingwas born in Bombay in 1865.  During his time at the United Services College, he began to write poetry, privately publishingSchoolboy Lyricsin 1881.  The following year he started work as a journalist in India, and while there produced a body of work, stories, sketches, and poems —including “Mandalay,” “Gunga Din,” and “Danny Deever”—which made him an instant literary celebrity when he returned to England in 1889.  While living in Vermont with his wife, an American, Kipling wroteThe Jungle Books,Just So Stories, andKim—which became widely regarded as his greatest long work, putting him high among the chronicles of British expansion.  Kipling returned to England in 1902, but he continued to travel widely and write, though he never enjoyed the literary esteem of his early years.  In 1907, he became the first British writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize.  He died in 1936