Rudyard Kipling Books in Order

Kipling’s first major collection of short stories sketches the lives, scandals and small tragedies of British officials, soldiers and their families in late‑Victorian India. Sharp observation and dark humour run through portraits of characters like Mrs Hauksbee and the Soldiers Three.

Kipling’s classic novella about two British adventurers who trek into remote Central Asia, set themselves up as rulers of a tribal kingdom and discover how quickly grandiose dreams of empire can turn deadly.

Headed by the eerie title story, this volume follows a man haunted by the ghost of a former lover’s rickshaw after her death. The other tales mix guilt, obsession and the supernatural, drawing on Kipling’s experiences in colonial India.

This novel follows Dick Heldar, a war artist whose growing blindness threatens both his career and his long, troubled love for the painter Maisie. Moving between Sudan campaigns and London studios, it probes art, ambition, friendship and loss.

A substantial collection of stories ranging from Anglo‑Indian society pieces to grim supernatural tales. Kipling explores misunderstandings between rulers and ruled, the strains of military life and the uncanny edge that can disturb everyday scenes.

A macabre detective‑style story featuring Strickland of the police. The mysterious disappearance of a civil servant ends with an unnerving discovery in the rafters of his bungalow and a quiet confession of murder.

A small collection built around the famous barrack‑room ballad Gunga Din, gathering other much‑loved Kipling poems that mingle strong rhythms with portraits of soldiers, empire and everyday courage.

Written with Wolcott Balestier, this adventure novel follows American reformer Kate Sheriff and fortune‑seeker Nick Tarvin to a princely Indian state. Their efforts to help women and secure a priceless necklace entangle them in palace politics and cultural clashes.

The classic sequence of poems voiced by ordinary British soldiers, including pieces such as Gunga Din and Mandalay. Mixing slang, marching rhythms and vivid storytelling, it captures barrack‑room humour, hardship and fatalism on imperial frontiers.

A varied collection of short stories drawn from both India and England, mixing realistic sketches with early science‑fictional and uncanny pieces. Returning characters and tightly built plots explore pride in work, technology and empire.

A collection of fables and adventures mostly set in the Indian jungle, following Mowgli, the man‑cub raised by wolves, alongside tales like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal. Together they explore courage, loyalty, law and belonging.

A stand‑alone edition of the Jungle Book story about a brave young mongoose who defends a human family’s garden from cobras. Fast‑paced animal action and real peril make it a perennial favourite with younger readers.

This companion to The Jungle Book adds further Mowgli adventures, including battles with wild dog packs and the mystery of a jeweled ankus, alongside other Indian tales. It deepens Kipling’s jungle world and its demanding, sometimes ruthless Law.

Spoiled millionaire’s son Harvey Cheyne is washed overboard an ocean liner and hauled aboard a New England fishing schooner. Forced to earn his keep on the Grand Banks, he learns seamanship, humility and a new sense of family through hard work and danger.

A story collection focused on work well done, from bridge‑building in India and horse‑breaking to ships and locomotives that “find themselves.” Many tales give machines and animals distinct voices while celebrating skill, endurance and professionalism.

A large omnibus of Kipling’s Indian short stories, including pieces such as The Man Who Would Be King and The Phantom Rickshaw. It portrays soldiers, officials and villagers amid the heat, gossip and dangers of the Raj.

Tales centred on three rank‑and‑file British soldiers—Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd—whose comic banter and bravery on campaigns in India and beyond offer a ground‑level view of the late‑Victorian army and its small, messy wars.

Told almost entirely through dialogue, this short dramatic sequence follows Captain Gadsby and his young wife from flirtation through marriage to serious illness in British India. It begins as drawing‑room comedy but ends on a far more sobering note.

Linked stories set largely in the Himalayan hill station of Simla, where Anglo‑Indian society gossips, flirts and schemes beneath the deodar trees. Kipling balances light social comedy with glimpses of jealousy, compromise and quiet despair.

A picture‑book version of the Just So story in which a ‘satiably curious elephant’s child journeys to the Limpopo River, has his nose pulled by a crocodile and ends up with the useful trunk elephants wear today.

Kimball O’Hara, an orphan of Irish descent growing up on the streets and railways of British India, becomes both a spy’s apprentice and a Buddhist lama’s companion. The novel blends espionage, travelogue and coming‑of‑age story in one rich journey.

Origin tales for children that explain how elephants got their trunks, leopards their spots and camels their humps. Written in rhythmic, conversational prose, they invite being read aloud and preserve the bedtime‑story voice Kipling used with his daughter.

A stand‑alone edition of the Just So story in which an independent, selfish cat slowly bargains its way into the cave of Man and Woman. It explains, with sly humour, why cats still behave as if they belong to nobody but themselves.

A poetry collection reflecting on Britain and its self‑governing dominions at the start of the twentieth century. The verses include naval pieces, Boer War poems and political meditations in a muscular, ballad‑like style that can be both proud and uneasy.

Stories and poems that move from realistic army life to speculative fiction, including early motoring adventures, visions of future warfare and haunting tales like They and Mrs Bathurst. Together they explore memory, technology and ghostly presences.

A deeply atmospheric ghost story about a grieving motorist who stumbles upon a hidden country house apparently inhabited by the spirits of dead children. The encounter blends early motoring detail with an ambiguous, emotionally charged meditation on loss.

Linked stories in which Sussex children Dan and Una meet Puck, last of the People of the Hills, who conjures figures from England’s past to talk with them. The book turns local fields and lanes into portals onto Roman, Norman and later history.

A compact selection of Kipling’s verse, typically including favourites such as If—, Gunga Din and The Gods of the Copybook Headings. It offers a handy introduction to his range from barrack‑room voices to reflective late poems.

Stories and poems ranging from English country houses to beehives and submarine patrols. Kipling shows how small choices reverberate through families, animals and empires, often revealing unexpected consequences and hidden loyalties.

A futuristic tale set in the year 2000, following an airship carrying mail across the Atlantic under the guidance of a global Aerial Board of Control. Rich in imagined technology and faux notices from the future, it helped shape early science fiction.

A sequel to Puck of Pook’s Hill in which Dan and Una again meet Puck and hear more tales from England’s past. Framed by poems such as If— and Cold Iron, the stories link magical encounters to questions of duty, courage and quiet change.

Essays and verse drawn from the First World War, describing destroyers, patrol craft and submarines in action. Kipling focuses on the routines, dangers and improvisations of naval crews rather than grand strategy.

A varied later collection mixing political satire, ghost stories, animal fables and the science‑fictional sequel As Easy as A.B.C. Throughout, Kipling worries away at responsibility, crowd behaviour and the costs of modernity.

Four linked pieces cast as letters from Indian soldiers serving in Europe and the Middle East during the First World War. Through their imagined voices Kipling explores how men from the subcontinent might describe distant battlefields to families at home.

A substantial collected edition of Kipling’s poetry, gathering decades of work from early ballads and narrative pieces to later, more compressed meditations. It brings soldiers’ songs, children’s rhymes and public commemorative poems into one volume.

A powerful short story about a mysterious, broken ex‑soldier who appears at a British mess and proves to be a long‑lost comrade once thought dead in Russia. His return raises uneasy questions about loyalty, memory and the cost of survival.

One of Kipling’s most complex later collections, combining stories, poems and scenes from a play. It revisits war, Freemasonry, schooldays and myth in oblique, experimental forms that reward slow, attentive reading.

Kipling’s final story collection pairs short fiction with poems to explore aging, faith, medicine and the lingering traces of war. The tone shifts between grim humour, compassion and a wary sense of possible renewal.

This volume gathers all of Kipling’s tales about Mowgli—from his adoption by wolves to his return to human society—along with the poems that frame them. Arranged in story order, it offers a single, continuous arc of the man‑cub’s life.

An anthology of twenty of Kipling’s stranger tales, focusing on ghosts, curses, haunted landscapes and uncanny animals. It showcases the darker, more atmospheric side of his short fiction in a single volume.

A comprehensive one‑volume edition of Kipling’s poems, presenting everything from barrack‑room ballads and children’s verses to First World War pieces and late, tightly wrought lyrics.

A Just So tale about King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba and a quarrelsome pair of butterflies. A boast about stamping one’s foot leads to vanishing gardens and a playful lesson in tact, pride and power.

A themed collection of Kipling’s speculative tales, including stories of airship travel, futuristic world government and uncanny machines. It highlights his role as an early, often overlooked science‑fiction writer.

This volume gathers Kipling’s full range of ghostly and uncanny fiction, from haunted houses and cursed relics to psychological chillers. It is aimed at readers drawn to the most unsettling corners of his imagination.

A curated selection of Kipling’s fantasy tales, edited by John Brunner, mixing Just So‑style mythmaking, ghost stories and mythological pieces. Together they show how often his work slips into the fantastic.

Collects ten of Kipling’s speculative stories, such as The Eye of Allah and With the Night Mail, featuring time travel, advanced technology and alternate futures. Brief notes place each tale in its imaginative context.

A modern selection of Kipling’s best‑known and most challenging short fiction, spanning Indian sketches, supernatural tales and later experimental pieces. It offers a broad picture of his strengths and contradictions as a storyteller.

An illustrated selection of Kipling’s poems for young readers, presenting an accessible introduction with brief commentary and artwork. It gathers adventure ballads, animal pieces and gentler verses about childhood and nature.

Usually issued as the lead piece in a short collection, this tale follows a drunken Englishman who desecrates a temple and seems to fall under a horrific curse. His friends are driven to a brutal confrontation with forces they barely understand.

A short volume of animal stories for younger readers, retelling three cautionary tales about an elephant, a clever hare and a deadly cobra. The simple narratives carry clear lessons about wit, bravery and the dangers of arrogance.

An anthology that includes Kipling’s The Bronckhorst Divorce‑Case alongside stories by other Victorian writers. Together they examine unhappy marriages, betrayals and social pressures in the late‑nineteenth‑century world.

A modern anthology of Kipling’s weirder stories, chosen for their elements of horror, fantasy and psychological unease. Expect ghosts, curses and disquieting glimpses of the uncanny in colonial and English settings.

A hefty collection of Kipling’s complete horror and dark‑fantasy fiction, from early Indian ghost stories to later psychological chillers. It underlines how often his imagination turns toward the eerie and disturbing.

Travel sketches first published as newspaper letters, recording Kipling’s journeys through Rajputana. He describes forts, rulers and desert landscapes with a mix of curiosity, irony and affection for local legend and everyday life.

An origin story about an idle camel who says ‘Humph!’ once too often and is given a hump so he can work without rest. It delivers a humorous fable about laziness, responsibility and making up lost time.

Another telling of the Elephant’s Child story, focusing on how an overly curious youngster’s encounter with a crocodile stretches his nose into the versatile trunk that lets elephants eat, drink, trumpet and swat.

Kipling’s playful explanation of how a desert leopard and his hunter friend adapt to a new forest home, gaining spots to match the dappled shade. The tale uses bold images to show how creatures and environments shape each other.

A single Just So story telling how a greedy rhinoceros’s theft of a cake leads to his once‑smooth hide becoming wrinkled and itchy forever. It offers a mock‑myth about manners, revenge and lasting consequences.

Graphic‑novel adaptations of Kipling’s Just So stories, turning his origin myths about whales, camels, elephants and more into short comic episodes created with a team of modern writers and artists.

A later selection of ten of Kipling’s strongest short stories, chosen to showcase a thrilling mix of mystery, adventure, science fiction and psychological horror in concentrated form.

A retelling of Mowgli’s life in the jungle for younger readers, usually drawing on episodes from the Jungle Book stories. It turns the separate tales into a single narrative about the man‑cub raised by wolves and his battles with Shere Khan.