Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book was first published in 1894.
The collection appeared as a book in 1894 and brought together animal stories set mainly in India, including the Mowgli stories and “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,” “The White Seal,” and “Toomai of the Elephants.” Kipling paired many stories with poems, helping establish the book’s distinctive mixture of narrative and verse.
The date is often confused with 1895, when Kipling published The Second Jungle Book, the follow-up collection. The two books are closely linked, and both contain Mowgli material, but they are separate volumes with different publication years.
The Jungle Book was written during a period when Kipling drew heavily on Indian settings, animals, languages, and colonial-era experience. Its later adaptations—including Disney’s 1967 animation and 2016 film—made selected characters famous worldwide, but neither film reproduces the original collection exactly.