When Alastair was about four years old, Grahame would tell him bedtime stories, some of which were about a toad, and on his frequent boating holidays without his family he would write further tales of Toad, Mole, Ratty, and Badger in letters to Alastair. Grahame married Elspeth Thomson in 1899, when he was 40 the next year they had their only child, a boy named Alastair (whose nickname was "Mouse") born premature, blind in one eye, and plagued by health problems throughout his life. During his early years at St. Edwards the boys were free to explore the old city with its quaint shops, historic buildings, and cobbled streets, St Giles' Fair, the idyllic upper reaches of the River Thames, and the nearby countryside. In 1866, their father tried to overcome his drinking problem and took the children back to live with him in Argyll, Scotland, but after a year they returned to their grandmother's house in Cranbourne, where Kenneth lived until he entered St Edward's School, Oxford in 1868.
More than a century after its original publication, it was adapted again for the stage, as a 2016 musical by Julian Fellowes.Īt Christmas 1865 the chimney of the house collapsed and the children moved to Fern Hill Cottage in Cranbourne, Berkshire. In 2003, The Wind in the Willows was listed at #16 in the BBC's survey The Big Read. In 1949, the first film adaptation was released by Disney as one of two segments in the package film. Milne adapted part of it for the stage as Toad of Toad Hall in 1929. The novel was in its 31st printing when playwright A.
He moved back to Berkshire, where he had lived as a child, and spent his time by the River Thames, doing much as the animal characters in his book do – to quote, "simply messing about in boats" – and expanding the bedtime stories he had earlier told his son Alastair into a manuscript for the book. In 1908, Grahame retired from his position as secretary of the Bank of 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.
Alternately slow-moving and fast-paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animals ( Mole, Rat (a European water vole), Toad, and Badger) in a pastoral version of Edwardian England. The Wind in the Willows is a children's novel by Scottish novelist Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908.
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