Was Kipling a plagiarist? by Kirsten Reach

A signed letter from 1895, in which Rudyard Kipling says he plagiarized other works in writing The Jungle Book, is up for auction. The lines Kipling may have borrowed appear in “The Law of the Jungle” as advice given from Baloo to Mowgli, which the author says may have been part of the “(Southern) Esquimaux rules for the division of spoils.”

Autograph expert Adam Andrusier, who is auctioning the letter for £2,500, said to Claire Carter of The Telegraph, “Letters by Kipling that mention his most enduring work are extremely rare.”

Andrusier bought the letter from Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers in May, after the letter was found in a collection of uncategorized papers and books.

Kipling’s letter reads:

I have been absent from home for some days. Hence the delay in answering yours of no date, in regard to my account of the Law of the Jungle. I am afraid that all that code in its outlines has been manufactured to meet ‘the necessities of the case’: though a little of it is bodily taken from (Southern) Esquimaux rules for the division of spoils. In fact, it is extremely possible that I have helped myself promiscuously but at present cannot remember from whose stories I have stolen.