Navy cloth binding with tan title plate and gilt title on the spine.

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Condition: Near Fine. Copyright edition.

The Second Jungle Book is a sequel to The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. First published in 1895, it features five stories about Mowgli and three unrelated stories, all but one set in India, most of which Kipling wrote while living in Vermont. All of the stories were previously published in magazines in 1894–5, often under different titles. The 1994 film The Jungle Book used it as a source.

Each story is followed by a related poem:

1. “How Fear Came”: This story takes place before Mowgli fights Shere Khan. During a drought, Mowgli and the animals gather at a shrunken Wainganga River for a “Water Truce” where the display of the blue-colored Peace Rock prevents anyone from hunting at its riverbanks. After Shere Khan was driven away by him for nearly defiling the Peace Rock, Hathi the elephant tells Mowgli the story of how the first tiger got his stripes when fear first came to the jungle. This story can be seen as a forerunner of the Just So Stories.

2. “The Law of the Jungle” (poem)

3. “The Miracle of Purun Bhagat”: An influential Indian politician abandons his worldly goods to become an ascetic holy man. Later, he must save a village from a landslide with the help of the local animals whom he has befriended.

4. “A Song of Kabir” (poem)

5. “Letting in the Jungle”: Mowgli has been driven out of the human village for witchcraft, and the superstitious villagers are preparing to kill his adopted parents Messua and her unnamed husband. Mowgli rescues them and then prepares to take revenge.

6. “Mowgli’s Song Against People” (poem)

7. “The Undertakers”: A mugger crocodile, a jackal and a Greater adjutant stork, three of the most unpleasant characters on the river, spend an afternoon bickering with each other until some Englishmen arrive to settle some unfinished business with the crocodile.

8. “A Ripple Song” (poem)

9. “The King’s Ankus”: Mowgli discovers a jewelled object beneath the Cold Lairs, which he later discards carelessly, not realising that men will kill each other to possess it. Note: The first edition of The Second Jungle Book inadvertently omits the final 500 words of this story, in which Mowgli returns the treasure to its hiding-place to prevent further killings. Although the error was corrected in later printings, it was picked up by some later editions.

10. “The Song of the Little Hunter” (poem)

11. “Quiquern”: A teenaged Inuit boy and girl set out across the arctic ice on a desperate hunt for food to save their tribe from starvation, guided by the mysterious animal-spirit Quiquern. However, Quiquern is not what he seems.

12. “Angutivaun Taina” (poem)

13. “Red Dog”: Mowgli’s wolfpack is threatened by a pack of rampaging dholes. Mowgli asks Kaa the python to help him formulate a plan to defeat them.

14. “Chil’s Song” (poem)

15. “The Spring Running”: Mowgli, now almost seventeen years old, is growing restless for reasons he cannot understand. On an aimless run through the jungle he stumbles across the village where his adopted mother Messua is now living with her two-year-old son, and is torn between staying with her and returning to the jungle.

16. “The Outsong” (poem)

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.

Kipling’s works of fiction include the Jungle Book duology (The Jungle Book, 1894; The Second Jungle Book, 1895), Kim (1901), the Just So Stories (1902) and many short stories, including “The Man Who Would Be King” (1888). His poems include “Mandalay” (1890), “Gunga Din” (1890), “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” (1919), “The White Man’s Burden” (1899), and “If—” (1910). He is seen as an innovator in the art of the short story. His children’s books are classics; one critic noted “a versatile and luminous narrative gift”.

Kipling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was among the United Kingdom’s most popular writers. Henry James said “Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known.” In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, as the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and at 41, its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and several times for a knighthood, but declined both. Following his death in 1936, his ashes were interred at Poets’ Corner, part of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey.

Kipling’s subsequent reputation has changed with the political and social climate of the age. The contrasting views of him continued for much of the 20th century. Literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote: “[Kipling] is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary and cultural history is far from settled. But as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how the empire was experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with.”