I've read other poems but no such poem like one written by a browning.The world lost one great poet

The story of Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves in the jungles of 19th century India, charmed me when I was young no less than it does today. Kipling wrote this to celebrate his love of India and it's wild animals as well as to show again some of his frequent themes of honor, loyalty, and perserverance. While his writing may seem 'dated' to some, to others the truths he includes rise above politics and 'current correctness'. Baloo the Bear, Shere Khan the Tiger, Bagheera the Panther, Kaa the Python were all childhood friends of mine, and reading these Jungle Book stories to your own children today will result in their exposure to such old fashioned concepts as sticking by your friends in adversity, helping your family, relying on yourself. Good lessons then, good lessons now. Mowgli learns the value of 'good manners' early on, learns that 'all play and no work' leads to unexpected troubles, learns that thoughtless actions can have devasting consequences. By showing Mowgli in an often dangerous 'all animal' world, we see reflections of modern human problems presented in a more subtle light. Kipling leads children down the jungle path into adventures beyond their day to day imagining and along the way, he weaves subtle points in and out of the stories, he shows the value of 'doing for yourself', of 'learning who to trust'. All of this in a tale of childhood adventure that's never been equaled. The book is over 100 years old now, and there are terms & concepts from the age of Empire that aren't 'correct' today. Parents can edit as needed as they read bedtime stories, but I've found that children learn early on that the world changes, and that some ideas that were popular long ago did not prove to be correct. Explaining this, too, is a part of parenting. Some of our current popular ideas may not stand the test of time, but I suspect that 100 years from now parents will still read the Jungle Book to their children. And the children will still be charmed, thrilled and instructed in valuable life-lessons.

This was probably one of my most favorite books as a young child if not my favorite. The way Kipling shows the struggle of this young boy in the jungle is amazing. He fails to leave out any detail and throughout the whole story your totally caught up in it without one point of boredom. I recommend this to any parent looking for a good book to read to their children or to have their kids read. Kipling is a great author and after doing a report on him and reading some of his other works I recommend those as well, especially A White Man's Burden. If your looking for books by a author who mixes fiction with truth, action and adventure with tales that bring in more serious aspects Kipling is the author for you.

The Jungle Books are usually marketed as juvenile fiction. True, this is essential reading for children, but it's even deeper when you read it as an adult.

Although "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" and "The White Seal" are just as good as the least of the Mowgli stories, it is the various tales of the boy raised in the jungles of India that are - and justifiably - the heart of the collection.

As a baby, Mowgli is found and raised by a clan of wolves and three godfatherly mentors who each teach him about life in different ways - Baloo the Bear, who teaches him the technical laws he'll need to survive; Kaa the Python, the nearly archtypal figure who teaches him even deeper lessons; and Bagheera the Panther, who perhaps loves Mowgli most of all but understands all too well the implications of the ambiguous humanity of the boy he's come to care for.

The stories have it all, from the alternately humorous and frightening "Kaa's Hunting", where Mowgli learns an important lesson about friendship and it's responsibility, to the epic "Red Dog" that reads like something out of Homer, to "Letting in the Jungle" which, without giving anything away contains a disturbing paragraph that's both glaring and a long time in coming if you've read between the lines in the previous Mowgli stories and yet at the same time so subtle you can almost miss it's importance.

If you didn't read it as a child, read it now. If you did, read it again as an adult.

This fantasy adventure story takes place in England and later transports the reader to the bowels of Central Africa. The story starts when Horace Holly makes a deal with his dying friend. His friend, knowing the end is near, has a young son, Leo, who he leaves an iron trunk to. Horace is instructed not to open the chest until the boy's 25th birthday. In addition, Horace must take care of Leo and raise him.

On Leo's 25th birthday, Horace and Leo open the chest and in it they discover that Leo is part of a historic lineage which goes back to the ancient Egyptians. They also discover that everlasting life can be found off the coast of Africa by bathing in a magical fire. They soon venture to the hidden area to discover an ancient race of cannibalistic people who are lead by Ayesha, otherwise known as She. She is a very beautiful temptress and has the secret to everlasting life. Also, she was in love with Leo's family centuries ago. When Leo arrives, She is much smitten with him.

This book was well written and the adventure well thought out. The level of detail that Haggard uses to describe the Amahagger's (the tribe Leo and Holly discover) were extraordinary. She is easily understood to be a sophisticated woman who has strong powers of life and death over her subjects. However, I found the book a little hard to read. The lengthy paragraphs that detailed the Amahagger society were not needed and slowed the pace of the book. Still not a bad adventure book but the pace kept being diverted by lengthy descriptions.

While studying at Cambridge, Ludwig Horace Holly receives a very strange visit from a long-time friend. In failing health, this friend gives Holly charge of his 5 year-old son Leo, and a mysterious chest, which he is charged not to open until the boy's twenty-fifth birthday. Twenty years later, the boy has grown to handsome manhood, and the chest is opened to reveal a family history stretching back some 23 centuries to ancient Egypt. Interestingly, included is the family's attempts to get revenge on an immortal white women who rules a tribe in Africa.

The young man, Leo, becomes fascinated with the tale, and draws Holly onto an adventure to Africa. Passing through danger upon danger, the companions finally find themselves in the hands of "She-who-must-be-obeyed".

While the story is dated and somewhat laughable by modern standards, it is very well written and more riveting than the above introduction may suggest. If nothing else, this book is an excellent example of Nineteenth Century fantasy literature.

There was a reason that this was a novel that intrigued Freud, who called it "A strange book, but full of hidden meaning". She, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, Peter Pan and a similar select company of works of popular fiction, works on a concious level of fantasy adventure narrative and multiple other levels of meaning, in this instance involving race, colonialism, sexuality, 19th Century anxieties, etc. While totally un-PC (so be warned if the books you read need support 21st Century views of the third world and women)it has a wonderful dreamlike feel that taps into a collective unconcious of symbols and archetypes. Besides which, it's a good read.

Browning is one of the great poets. this selection contains poems such as 'the last dutchess', 'porphyria's lover' and 'childe roland to the dark tower came' which shows browning at his best. this selected poems only whetted my appetite for a complete version.

Penguin has brought out this new volume to replace George MacBeth's eccentric and useless volume in the Penguin Classics series. But Karlin's production is equally dismal. These books, though theoretically aimed at a non-specialist audience, seem actually constructed for the amusement of exclusively donnish readers. Many of the most powerful and important achievements in Victorian poetry are ignored by this volume. Among the missing are: "The Scholar-Gypsy," "The Triumph of Time," "The Defense of Guenevere," and "Wessex Heights." The Ring and the Book is entirely unrepresented as is Empedocles on Etna. At the same time the volume includes great lumps of unpoetic babble. Clough's dull prosings are allotted 40 pages by Karlin while D. G. Rossetti is ludicrously restricted to 6! The Arnold selection is hopelessly unrepresentative, but Karlin manages room for such waxwork poetry as the following: I can read of thee,and find out/How thou fliest fast or slow;/Of thee in the north and south too,/Of thy great moustachioed mouth too,/And thy Latin name also (from Mary Howitt, The Dor-Hawk). Or the reader can thrill to Thomas Miller's The Ant-Lion: Then get into the sand his head,/Give it a bite and he is dead. The Ant-Lion has, perhaps, had some say in the construction of this anthology.After the misfire of MacBeth's volume, I would have thought Penguin would have been careful to publish a volume that its potential readers would have welcomed. They won't welcome this.