The Wind in the Willows needs no introduction - children have enjoyed the exploits of its characters for generations. Few would guess that its author, Kenneth Grahame, was a tortured soul. Marriage to the predatory Elspeth Thomson, when both seemed destined for the single life, was a shared fantasy of invented truth. Out of that union came a catastrophically spoiled son, 'mouse', for whom that greatest of children's stories was written. It was the child's tragedy that he was sucked into the unreality of his parents' lives and did not survive it, ending his life in suicide.Alison Prince brings her own highly acclaimed expertise as a children's writer to this remarkably perceptive biography of Kenneth Grahame. Drawing on hitherto unpublished material she uncovers layer upon layer of Grahame's personality to reveal the truth behind the myth of this intriguing man, 'the tortured soul of Mr Toad'.'Alison Prince describes the grim story of Grahame's marriage and fatherhood squarely and sensitively.' Independent'A meaty, well-constructed biography.' Allan Massie Daily Telegraph
Kenneth Grahame 8 March 1859 - 6 July 1932) was a British writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows (1908), one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon; both books were later adapted into Disney films Kenneth Grahame was born on 8 March (1859) in Edinburgh, Scotland. When he was a little more than a year old, his father, an advocate, received an appointment as sheriff-substitute in Argyllshire at Inveraray on Loch Fyne. Kenneth loved the sea and was happy there, but when he was 5, his mother died from complications of childbirth, and his father, who had a drinking problem, gave over care of Kenneth, his brother Willie, his sister Helen and the new baby Roland to Granny Ingles, the children's grandmother, in Cookham Dean in the village of Cookham in Berkshire. There the children lived in a spacious, if dilapidated, home, "The Mount", on spacious grounds in idyllic surroundings, and were introduced to the riverside and boating by their uncle, David Ingles, curate at Cookham Dean church. This delightful ambiance, particularly Quarry Wood and the River Thames, is believed, by Peter Green, his biographer, to have inspired the setting for The Wind in the Willows. He was an outstanding pupil at St Edward's School in Oxford. During his early years at St. Edwards, a sports regimen had not been established and the boys had freedom to explore the old city with its quaint shops, historic buildings, and cobblestone streets, St Giles' Fair, the idyllic upper reaches of the River Thames, and the nearby countryside.
Dream Days is a collection of children's fiction and reminiscences of childhood written by Kenneth Grahame. A sequel to Grahame's 1895 collection The Golden Age (some of its selections feature the same family of five children), Dream Days was first published in 1898 under the imprint John Lane: The Bodley Head. (The first six selections in the book had been previously published in periodicals of the day-in The Yellow Book, the New Review, and in Scribner's Magazine in the United States.)The book is best known for its inclusion of Grahame's classic story The Reluctant Dragon. Like its precursor volume, Dream Days received strong approval from the literary critics of the day. In the decades since, the book has perhaps suffered a reputation as a thinner and weaker sequel to The Golden Age-except for its single hit story. In one modern estimation, both books "paint a convincingly unsentimental picture of childhood, with the adults in these sketches totally out of touch with the real concerns of the young people around them, including their griefs and rages." As with The Golden Age, the first edition of Dream Days was un-illustrated; again like the prior volume, a subsequent edition of Dream Days was published with illustrations by Maxfield Parrish. The publisher's first intention was to print color plates; however, John Lane was not satisfied with the color reproductions of Parrish's pictures. Lane instead chose a new photogravure reproduction process that produced black-and-white results superior to the halftone images in the 1899 edition of The Golden Age. The Parrish-illustrated edition of Dream Days was issued by The Bodley Head in London and New York in 1902; it contained ten full-page illustrations (one for each of the eight selections plus frontispiece and title page), and six tailpieces. The quality of the images in Dream Days inspired Lane to issue a matching edition of The Golden Age, with improved photogravure plates, in 1904. Kenneth Grahame ( 8 March 1859 - 6 July 1932) was a British writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows (1908), one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon; both books were later adapted into Disney films.Kenneth Grahame was born on 8 March (1859) in Edinburgh, Scotland. When he was a little more than a year old, his father, an advocate, received an appointment as sheriff-substitute in Argyllshire at Inveraray on Loch Fyne. Kenneth loved the sea and was happy there, but when he was 5, his mother died from complications of childbirth, and his father, who had a drinking problem, gave over care of Kenneth, his brother Willie, his sister Helen and the new baby Roland to Granny Ingles, the children's grandmother, in Cookham Dean in the village of Cookham in Berkshire. There the children lived in a spacious, if dilapidated, home, "The Mount", on spacious grounds in idyllic surroundings, and were introduced to the riverside and boating by their uncle, David Ingles, curate at Cookham Dean church. This delightful ambiance, particularly Quarry Wood and the River Thames, is believed, by Peter Green, his biographer, to have inspired the setting for The Wind in the Willows. He was an outstanding pupil at St Edward's School in Oxford. During his early years at St. Edwards, a sports regimen had not been established and the boys had freedom to explore the old city with its quaint shops, historic buildings, and cobblestone streets, St Giles' Fair, the idyllic upper reaches of the River Thames, and the nearby countryside.Grahame died in Pangbourne, Berkshire, in 1932. He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford. Grahame's cousin Anthony Hope, also a successful author, wrote his epitaph, which reads: "To the beautiful memory of Kenneth Grahame, husband of Elspeth and father of Alastair, who passed the river on the 6th of July, 1932, leaving childhood and literature through him the more blest for all time"
The Wind in the Willows is a children's novel by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animals in a pastoral version of Edwardian England. The novel is notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality and camaraderie, and celebrated for its evocation of the nature of the Thames Valley.
Grahame's reminiscences are notable for their conception "of a world where children are locked in perpetual warfare with the adult 'Olympians' who have wholly forgotten how it feels to be young"--a theme later explored by J. M. Barrie and other authors.
Kenneth Grahame ( 8 March 1859 - 6 July 1932) was a Scottish writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows (1908), one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon. Both books were later adapted for stage and film, of which A.A. Milne's Toad of Toad Hall was the first. The Disney films, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and The Reluctant Dragon, have become the best known adaptations. Early life: Kenneth Grahame was born on 8 March 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. When he was a little more than a year old, his father, an advocate, received an appointment as sheriff-substitute in Argyllshire at Inveraray on Loch Fyne. Kenneth loved the sea and was happy there, but when he was five, his mother died of puerperal fever, 1] and his father, who had a drinking problem, gave over care of Kenneth, his brother Willie, his sister Helen and the new baby Roland to Granny Ingles, the children's grandmother, in Cookham Dean in the village of Cookham in Berkshire. There the children lived in a spacious, if dilapidated, home, The Mount, on spacious grounds in idyllic surroundings, and were introduced to the riverside and boating by their uncle, David Ingles, curate at Cookham Dean church. This ambiance, particularly Quarry Wood and the River Thames, is believed, by Peter Green, his biographer, to have inspired the setting for The Wind in the Willows. He was an outstanding pupil at St Edward's School in Oxford. During his early years at St Edwards, a sports regimen had not been established and the boys had freedom to explore the old city with its quaint shops, historic buildings, and cobblestone streets, St Giles' Fair, the upper reaches of the Thames, and the nearby countryside. Death: Grahame died in Pangbourne, Berkshire, in 1932. He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford. Grahame's cousin Anthony Hope, also a successful author, wrote his epitaph, which reads: "To the beautiful memory of Kenneth Grahame, husband of Elspeth and father of Alastair, who passed the river on the 6th of July, 1932, leaving childhood and literature through him the more blest for all time.
Kenneth Grahame captured the imagination of the English speaking world with his books in the early 1900s. Later "The Wind in the Willows" and "The Reluctant Dragon" were made into Disney movies. This collection contains "The Wind in the Willows", "The Golden Age" and "Dream Days" (including "The Reluctant Dragon"). "If there is a man or woman living who cannot read this book with delight, to him or her we offer our pity and compassion." (The National Observer, of "Dream Days".)
In 1908, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows was published to surprisingly little critical fanfare. But readers championed its cause, and Grahame's novel of a riverbank life soon proved both a commercial—and ultimately critical—success. One hundred years after its first publication, Grahame's book and its memorable characters continue their hold on the public imagination and have taken their place in the canon of children's literature. However, little academic criticism emerged in the wake of the book's initial publication. Only after the appearance of Peter Green's biocritical study did the academy begin to wrestle with Grahame's complex work, though many read it in terms of Grahame's often unhappy personal life. The essays in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows: A Children's Classic at 100 focus on recent discussions of the book in regards to class, gender, and nationality but also examine issues previously not addressed by Grahame criticism, such as the construction of heteronormative masculinity, the appeal of this very English novel to Chinese readers, and the meaning of a text in which animals can be human-like, pets, servants, and even food. This volume also revisits some of the issues that have engaged critics from the start, including the book's dual-strand narrative structure, the function of home, and the psychological connections between Toad and Grahame. Scholars of fantasy and children's literature will find great value in this collection that sheds new light on this enduring classic.
He wrote one of the most quintessentially English books, yet Kenneth Grahame (1859 -1932) was a Scot. He was four years old when his mother died and his father became an alcoholic, so Kenneth grew up with his grandmother who lived on the banks of the beloved River Thames. Forced to abandon his dreams of studying at Oxford, he was accepted as a clerk at the Bank of England where he became one of the youngest men to be made company secretary. He narrowly escaped death in 1903 when he was mistaken for the Bank's governor and shot at several times. He wrote secretly in his spare time for magazines and became a contemporary of contributors including Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw and WB Yeats. Kenneth's first book, Pagan Papers (1893) initiated his success, followed by The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898), which turned him into a celebrated author. Ironically, his most famous novel today was the least successful during his lifetime: The Wind in the Willows (1908) originated as letters to his disabled son, who was later found dead on a train line after a suspected suicide. Kenneth never recovered from the tragedy and died with a broken heart in earshot of the River Thames. His widow, Elspeth, dedicated the rest of her life to preserving her husband's name and promoting his work.
This title is part of Bug Club, the first whole-school reading programme that joins books with an online reading world to teach today's children to read. This title is suitable for ages 9-10 (Blue level).
The Golden Age was published in 1895, by a British writer Kenneth Grahame. What's interesting about The Golden Age is that in this book, Grahame uses the metaphor of Ancient Greek legends and stories as parallels to his own life. The adults are termed "The Olympians" appearing remote, inaccessible, and lofty to a child. Their activities are incomprehensible to the young mind while they had no interest in the doings of their wards. Grahame's humorous yet ironical tone lends a touch of fun to the adult world as seen through the eyes of a child.
