English literature the book is designed to acquaint students with the main outlines

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also wrote historical novels, romances, and plays. At last he left fiction to study and lecture on spiritualism (communication with spirits).

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Rudyard Kipling was bom in Bombay, India, on December 30,1865, in the family of John Lockwood Kipling, a professor of architectural sculpture. At the age of six he was taken to England and educated at an English College in North Devon. In 1883 he returned to India and became sub-editor of the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette. At the age of 21 he published his first volume, a small book of verse “Departmental Ditties”. A year later his “Plain Tails from the Hills” introduced him to the public as a story­ teller. Before he was twenty-four he had already published six small collections of stories, which showed his remarkable talent.

From 1887 to 1899 Kipling traveled around the world and vis­ ited China, Japan and America. During this period he wrote his

most popular works: “The Jungle Book” (1894-1895), “Captain Courageous” (1897), “Kim” (1902), “Just so Stories”(1902), “Puck of Pook’s Hill” (1906) and “Rewards and Fairies”( 1910). The best and most beloved of Kipling’s prose works is “The Jungle Book”. !t was intended for children. In it Kipling depicted the life of wild animals, showed their character and behavior. Each

chapter of this book began with a poem and ended with a song.

The main character of this work Mowgli is the child of an Indian wood-cutter. He gets lost in the jungle and creeps into a lair of a wolf. The mother wolf lets him feed together with her cubs and calls him Mowgli which means frog. Mow'gli has many adventures and finally returns to the society of men.

“The Jungle Bookv shows that man is a curious animal. He is the weakest and at the same time the strongest animal in the world. Kipling wants to show that in an uncivilized society powerful animals triumph. The weak animals submit to the power of those who are stronger. This is the law of the Jungle, it is the law of the world. Kipling regrets that the same law of the Jungle exists in a civilized society too. He wants to see man as a good and noble being.