The classic tales of the Middle Thames, of the River Bank, the Wild Wood, Ratty, Mole, Mr Badger, and the incorrigible Toad, have been cherished by children and wise adults for generations. Amongst those who cherish them are Bapton Books' partners, GMW Wemyss, historian and West Country essayist, and American historian Markham Shaw Pyle. The noted annotators of Kipling, and acclaimed for their histories of 1912, 1940, and 1941, Mr Pyle and Mr Wemyss here expand and re-issue their classic annotated version of Grahame, with some 345 footnotes that explain the Edwardian scene, canals, rural JPs and Toad's motoring offences, the sad fate of Kenneth Grahame's son, class issues in the Wild Wood, and Classical mythology. With their sense of history and landscape, their love of this book of both their childhoods, and an eye for literary cross-references, Mr Wemyss and Mr Pyle range from the Psalter and the Book of Common Prayer to the Sacred Canon of Sherlock Holmes, from Eliot to Tolkien, Gissing to Betjeman, Kipling to Aristotle, in giving this classic new depth and resonance. Even if you have never wondered just which canal Toad was thrown into, or why Toad's trial is only the second funniest in English literature, this annotated edition will deepen and enrich your reading of these inimitable stories. Adults and sensible children - or, rather, children and sensible adults - will rejoice anew in them.
Kenneth Grahame (1859 - 1932), whose 1908 triumph brought the world Ratty, Mole, Toad, and Mr Badger, was an Edinburgh-born Anglo-Scot who, after a career at the Bank of England, retired to Berkshire, at Cookham on the banks of the Thames, where he wrote stories that have delighted generations. The editors and annotators of Kenneth Grahame's classic tales (as also of Kipling), Markham Shaw Pyle and GMW Wemyss, the partners in Bapton Books, are the co-authors of a celebrated centenary history of the Titanic enquiries in the US and the UK, and editors and annotators of all of Kipling's Mowgli stories in one volume. Mr Pyle is the historian of how, four months before Pearl Harbor, the US Congress kept the draft by one vote. Mr Wemyss is the historian of the May 1940 debate in the House of Commons that ended by casting down Chamberlain's government and installing Churchill as prime minister - one day before Hitler invaded France. Together, they are the co-authors of other works of criticism and essays on rural pursuits and literature, and of the forthcoming (Christmas 2012) history of that year of portent, 1937. Mr Wemyss lives in Wilts; Mr Pyle, in Texas.
