Neil Gaiman has written a brand new Introduction, just for this volume. #Number 49 in the Fantasy Masterworks Rudyard Kipling influenced several generations of writers with his weird and supernatural stories. Kipling was the first British Nobel Laureate for literature Kipling's animal fantasy stories, the Just-So Stories and the two volumes of The Jungle Books, are much-loved classics One of the greatest writers of English prose Millions of copies of Kipling's stories and poems have been sold through the years His vivid, brilliant short stories cross genre boundaries to explore fantasy, sf and the supernatural Edited and with an afterword by the award-winning writer and editor Stephen Jones

Born in Bombay, India, then raised in England from the age of five, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is today best known as the author of such classics of literature as The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1902) and Just-So Stories (1902). Kipling was the first English writer to win the Nobel Prize, in 1907, for literature.