Books published by publisher Aziloth Books

Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865 and spent his early years reveling in the country's exotic delights. At five he was sent to school in England, and did not returned until 1882, when he worked as a reporter on the Civil and Military Gazette. A prolific writer, he soon became famous for a prodigious range of tales and poems, from the high adventure of The Man Who Would Be King, through the gritty doggerel of Barrack Room Ballads to charming children's story such as Puck of Pook's Hill and, perhaps his most celebrated offering, The Jungle Book. Although it includes such famous tales as 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi' The Jungle Book's true hero is Mowgli, a young boy raised with wolves, and hunted by the evil tiger Shere Khan. All is well until the realization dawns in Mowgli that he is human - knowledge he tries to repress as he is appalled by humankind's greed and destructiveness. Through a series of perils and adventures, Mowgli gradually comes to terms with the animal and human facets of his life. Like all good children's stories, these tales have a depth of allegory and symbolism that allows them to be enjoyed by adults as well as children. This edition includes The Second Jungle Book (hence the title: The Jungle Books) and completes the story of Mowgli. It is a work that can be read throughout a lifetime - one that will bring pleasure and further insights at each reading.

Helen Keller is a name associated with success in overcoming the many challenges faced by the deaf and blind. Born in 1880 in Alabama, USA, it was Keller who first made people realise that a disability should not be a barrier to achievement and fullness of life.When an illness at the age of 19 months left Helen bereft of sight and hearing and with communication all but lost to her, she struggled in fear and frustration to connect with the world around her. Anne Sullivan, a teacher from the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, was engaged by Helen’s parents to teach their seven-year old daughter at home and it proved the beginning of an impressive and lasting transformation. The famous eureka moment in Helen’s awareness is poignantly featured in the many films made about her, when Anne fingerspelt the word ‘water’ into Helen’s palm while holding the other under the spout. At that moment, Helen realised that words were labels for ‘things’. With the bit between her teeth, Helen was determined to achieve what seeing and hearing people took for granted and she went on to learn to speak, to read braille and to write – and even discovered she could enjoy music by feeling the vibrations of the beat.The Story of My Life is Helen Keller’s heart-warming and inspiring memoir of her early life.

Lewis Carroll wrote 'Alice through the Looking Glass' in 1871, five years after his more famous 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'. Partaking of the same surreal and dream-like quality, the book tells the story of Alice's magical trip through her living room mirror and the eccentric army of comic characters she finds on the other side. Illustrated with 50 wonderful original drawings by Sir John Tenniel. An all-time favourite with children of all ages, adults may discern deeper layers of meaning contained in the book- some believe that Lewis Carroll left a code within 'Alice through the Looking Glass' that links - by way of the chess set and six brooks mentioned in the story - with Carroll's favourite number, the mysterious '42'.

This colourful edition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem 'The Song of Hiawatha' is specially selected with children in mind, tracing Hiawatha's life from his early years and his friendship with animals and nature spirits through his marriage to Minnehaha and his mission to teach agriculture and bring peace among the warring Ojibway, Dakota and other tribes along the US-Canadian border. The poem was first published in 1855 but is set in the age just prior to the first European settlers to North America. Profusely illustrated, the forty-eight colour and thirty-eight black and white images blend seamlessly with the hypnotic rhythm of Longfellow's famous poem, bringing the magical world of the American Indian - where dream and waking life were considered equally real - fully to life. The moon is a grandmother, a rainbow the place flowers go to when they die, dwarves (Puk-Wudjies) haunt the dark woods, and Hiawatha himself is the son of Mudjekeewis, the West Wind. Brief explanatory links between excerpted verses maintain the integrity of the story, giving even the youngest reader an understanding of the wondrous scope of this magnificent epic.

Aphra Benn was a phenomenon: a lone female who was by turns a well-respected playwright, a spy, a convict, and the author of 'Oroonoko', the first English novel. Behn tells the (reputedly true) story of an African Prince, betrayed into slavery, who tires of the perfidy of the whites and leads a slave revolt for freedom - with tragic consequences. The atrocities Behn described shocked Restoration England and greatly advanced the cause of abolitionism. Behn's innovative novel also gave females a literary voice; as Virginia Woolf wrote "...it was she who earned [women] the right to speak their minds."

Born in Bombay in 1865, Rudyard Kipling was taken from the exotic sights and sounds of India just five years later and sent to foster parents in England, where he was by his own admission, utterly miserable. When he had children of his own, Kipling made sure that his offspring's young lives were full of mystery and delight, entertaining them by inventing ingenious and amusing explanations to such important childhood questions as how the elephant got its trunk, or the leopard its spots. The original book, published in 1902, contained more than thirty of Kipling's own brilliant illustrations, all of which have been faithfully reproduced in this Aziloth Books edition. Written in comical, grandiloquent style, shot through with beautiful poems and improbably long and hilarious invented words, the 'Just So Stories' have been a firm favourite of children (and adults) for more than a century, and are likely to remain a first choice for bedtime stories for many years to come.

Widely acclaimed since its first publication in 1927, Virginia Woolf's 'To the Lighthouse' is a novel whose overt simplicity of plot hides a complex mix of autobiographical detail, searching social questions and deep philosophical enigmas. The author's innovative use of nonlinear plot, stream- of-consciousness, and varying narrators, transforms the apparently 'normal' incidents in the life of the Ramsay family into a mythic reflection on time, gender, morality, and death. Woolf considered 'To the Lighthouse' to be "easily the best of my books", a judgment with which serious students of literature can only concur.

William Henry Hudson was a true child of South America, born in Argentina in 1841. His parents had emigrated from the USA to begin sheep farming, and the young William grew up herding stock with local 'gauchos', the freedom-loving cowboys of the pampas, and studying the wildlife of the area. He also began writing, both for scientific journals, and increasingly, books containing his own thoughts and ideas on a wide variety of subjects. 'The Purple Land' is William Hudson's exuberant first novel. Set in the turbulent political times of Uruguay's birth, it tells the tale of European adventurer Richard Lamb, who elopes with the lovely Paquita, thereby earning the undying enmity of her powerful father. Desperate to support his wife, he sets off on a series of increasingly wild adventures that includes horse-stealing, a fight to the death, imprisonment and escape - and culminates in a pitched battle between the two main political parties, 'Whites' and 'Reds', with our hero unfortunately picking the losing side. In between, Richard manages to win the hearts of at least three Latin beauties, all of whom further complicate his already convoluted existence. But 'The Purple Land' is far more than a simple adventure story. Constructed as an early form of 'road novel', Hudson fills its pages with intimate sketches of the people and the customs of mid-nineteenth century pampas life, colourful vignettes set among his masterful depiction of the region's wildlife and its matchless natural beauty.

Born in Canterbury in 1564, the same year as his friend and literary colleague, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe shunned a life as a clergyman which university wits like himself were expected to follow, and moved to London to pursue the insecure craft of a playwright. Among his early plays were Tamburlaine the Great and The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta, all well-received by Elizabethan audiences and displaying an impressive poetic talent that was bold enough to use high-quality blank verse for the first time in English theatre. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus was written around 1588/89. A fusion of a tragedy and morality play, the storyline draws its inspiration from fanciful accounts of a real sixteenth century German alchemist, called Faust who supposedly sold his soul to the devil using magic. Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus vacillates between the desire for power and knowledge and the fear of damnation in masterful soliloquys that showcase Marlowe’s outstanding skill as a poet. Christopher Marlowe was poised to give a great deal more to Elizabethan drama but that future was sadly foreshortened by a violent and sudden death at twenty-nine.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is the world’s first surrealist book, written in 1865, at a time when surrealism had not yet been invented. The author of this dream-like fantasy, full of puns and ironic comments on life, was Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), who devised the story for three young girls during a boat trip on the river Isis in Oxford. Since its publication, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been a favourite with children of all ages – and adults, too, can find deeper layers of meaning beneath the madcap adventures of Alice and her outlandish army of comic characters. The story has been translated into 125 different languages and, after the Bible, Qur’an and Shakespeare, is the most frequently quoted book in the world.

Originally collected from German peasantry in the early 1800's, Grimm's Fairy Tales are known and adored the world over: Hansel and Grethel, Snow White, Red Riding Hood and the Sleeping Beauty are all part of everyone's childhood. Their numerous iterations in fiction, theatre and latterly in cinema and cartoon formats have made them even more widely appreciated, but all such spin-offs have altered or edited the original tales, sometimes beyond recognition.This new Aziloth edition re-unites the reader with Grimm's original characters. We meet the true Snow-White and Sleeping Beauty, and come face to face with cruel stepmothers, strange beasts and jealous queens in full-blooded tales of danger, wickedness and shining virtue. Children are naturally attracted to such powerful parables which, while delighting their young minds with magic spells, wizards and giants, effortlessly teach them invaluable life lessons distilled from generations past. As Professor Joseph Campbell so aptly said " The folk tale is the picture-language of the soul".All 209 tales from the original publication are included, plus 10 'Children's Legends', and the book's appeal is further enhanced with 29 illustrations by the incomparable Arthur Rackham, 23 of which are full page spreads.