The Wind in the Willows (Paperback - 2015)

The Wind in the Willows is a book of linked animal tales that began as a series of bedtime stories and was published in 1908. It is beautifully written with evocative descriptions of the countryside interspersed with exciting adventures and became a classic of English children's literature. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters--principally Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad--in a pastoral version of Edwardian England. The novel is notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality, and camaraderie and is celebrated for its evocation of the nature of the Thames Valley. It has two separate actions going on. There are chapters dealing with the adventures of Toad, and chapters that explore human emotions like fear, awe, and nostalgia.

Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1859. When he was just 5, his mother died, and his father, who had a drinking problem, gave over care of Kenneth, his siblings Willie, Helen and Roland to Granny Ingles, the children’s grandmother, in Berkshire. There, the children lived in a large home, “The Mount”, on spacious grounds in idyllic surroundings, and the riverside. This delightful ambience is believed to have inspired the setting for Grahame Kenneth’s most famous work The Wind in the Willows.

Grahame wanted to attend Oxford University, but was not allowed to do so by his guardian due to financial concerns. Instead he was sent to work at the Bank of England in 1879, and rose through the ranks until retiring as its Secretary in 1908 due to ill-health.

When he was a young man in his twenties, he began to write light stories which were published in London periodicals like St. James Gazette. Some of these stories were collected and published as Pagan Papers in 1893, and, two years later, as The Golden Age. These were followed by Dream Days in 1898, which contains The Reluctant Dragon.

There is a ten-year gap between Grahame’s penultimate book and the publication of The Wind in the Willows. During this decade was born his son Alastair, blind of one eye and plagued by ill-health problems. Alastair’s wayward headstrong nature transformed Grahame into the swaggering Mr. Toad — one of four principal characters of this novel. Despite its success, he never attempted a sequel. The book was a hit and Toad remains one of the most celebrated and beloved fiction characters in children’s literature.