London: Macmillan and Co., Date: 1894. First edition. Hardcover. John Lockwood Kipling. This is a compelling set of British first editions of perhaps Kipling’s most famous works – the first and second Jungle Books. These copies were previously owned by Churchill’s friends and publishers, Frank and Nelson Doubleday, and apparently used by Nelson to prepare Doubleday’s 1946 editions. Ironically, Kipling’s quintessential tales of India were conceived in Vermont, where Kipling and his father, John Lockwood Kipling (1837-1911) “worked together in the closest harmony… as the two sat smoking their pipes and plotting out fresh stories together.” (Allen, Kipling Sahib, p.328) Here Mowgli was born, the infant found by Father Wolf, saved from Shere Khan, and tutored in the Laws of the Jungle by Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear. “The pen took charge, and I watched it begin to write stories about Mowgli and the animals, which later grew into the Jungle Books.” Kipling had left India for the last time in 1891, but “With his father’s guidance he learned to ‘undo what the North has done’ and so let back in all ‘the sights and the sounds and smells / That ran with our youth in the eye of the Sun’ – the flotsam and jetsam of twelve years of Indian living – just long enough to create the celebration of childhood that is The Jungle Book…” (Allen, Kipling Sahib, p. 364) The Jungle Book was published in 1894, seven stories and seven poems with eight of the ...