Mumbai
Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 and never quite stopped writing about it. Kim opens in Lahore, but the novel's sense of a crowded, multilingual India owes a great deal to the city of his childhood, and The Jungle Book turns the subcontinent into a set of fables that have been read ever since as both stories and propaganda.
The Asiatic Society was founded in 1804 and its library holds manuscripts, maps and nineteenth-century periodicals. Bombay was the centre of the Indian printing trade, and the city's archives document a publishing world that was already substantial before the novel arrived.
A library to check
- Asiatic Society of Mumbai — catalogues and digital collections, open to readers online
Books connected to Mumbai
- Kim — Rudyard Kipling, 1901. Kipling's best novel, and the most vivid picture of British India in fiction.
- The Jungle Book — Rudyard Kipling, 1894. The best children's book about rules, and a masterclass in short-form storytelling.
A note on accuracy
We describe literary connections and public collections, not street addresses, opening hours or ticket prices. Those change and we cannot verify them for every reader. Follow the institution's own site for current visiting information.