Just So Stories

Born in Bombay in 1865, Rudyard Kipling was taken from the exotic sights and sounds of India just five years later and sent to foster parents in England, where he was by his own admission, utterly miserable. When he had children of his own, Kipling made sure that his offspring's young lives were full of mystery and delight, entertaining them by inventing ingenious and amusing explanations to such important childhood questions as how the elephant got its trunk, or the leopard its spots. The original book, published in 1902, contained more than thirty of Kipling's own brilliant illustrations, all of which have been faithfully reproduced in this Aziloth Books edition. Written in comical, grandiloquent style, shot through with beautiful poems and improbably long and hilarious invented words, the 'Just So Stories' have been a firm favourite of children (and adults) for more than a century, and are likely to remain a first choice for bedtime stories for many years to come.

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.