Just So Stories (Illustrated by the Author)

First published in 1902, "Just So Stories" is Rudyard Kipling's classic collection of animal fables and poetry. This collection grew out of nighttime story-telling between Rudyard and his daughter Josephine. The peculiar name is drawn from her insistence that these tales, which were origin stories describing how animals got their most distinctive features, be told "just so". This volume reproduces the complete edition of "Just So Stories" which includes the following stories: "How The Whale Got His Throat", "How The Camel Got His Hump", "How The Rhinoceros Got His Skin", "How The Leopard Got His Spots", "The Elephant's Child", "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo", "The Beginning of the Armadillos", "How The First Letter Was Written", "How The Alphabet Was Made", "The Crab That Played With The Sea", "The Cat That Walked By Himself", "The Tabu Tale", and "The Butterfly That Stamped". This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and includes the original illustrations by the author.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet and novelist. Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901) 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 regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature and one critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous narrative gift". 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: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known." In 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.