A brief history of naturism in fiction

From Kipling to Kindle: The evolution of naturism in fiction

The Jungle Book characters illustrated by John Lockwood Kipling

Some might say that naturism in fiction starts with Adam and Eve (and many more biblical episodes of nudity), or with the myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Centuries later, nudity was not all that uncommon in the literature of medieval Europe, often with euphemisms such as “dressed the way she was born.” But the beginnings of something akin to a naturist lifestyle portrayed in fiction can be traced back to a couple of turn-of-the-twentieth-century writers, Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895) introduced a wide readership to Mowgli, a boy growing up nude among wild animals in India.

The popular stories paved the way for Burroughs’ numerous novels featuring Tarzan (starting with Tarzan of the Apes in 1912), with adventures somewhat like Mowgli’s but set in Africa. In the same year, 1912, Burroughs also published the first of many novels set on Bars…