Rudyard Kipling (1865 –1936) is another writer of the second half of the Victorian period who went abroad to have new experiences. When he faced new worlds and culture he discovered himself and the real nature of man.
R. Kipling was born in a British family in Bombay. Sent back to England to receive a formal education, the young writer started idealizing the India of his early childhood as a ’space of edenic unity’ beyond all divisions and from the ‘dark land’ that was England.
His famous books, mostly set (ambientati) in India, include Plain Tales from the Hills (1886), The Man Who Would Be King (1888); Captains Courageous (1897) and Kim (1901).
But the works which gave him fame are The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895), collections of stories first published in magazines in 1893 with Kipling’s father illustrations.
These tales and fables are about Mowgli.; the characters are mainly animals described in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons.