The Wind in the Willows

Kenneth Grahame

Wordsworth Editions, 1993 - Juvenile Fiction - 192 pages

The tales of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad. When Mole goes boating with the Water Rat instead of spring-cleaning, he discovers a new world. As well as the river and the Wild Wood, there is Toad's craze for fast travel which leads him and his friends on a whirl of trains, barges, gipsy caravans and motor cars and even into battle. AUTHOR: Kenneth Grahame (March 8, 1859 - July 6, 1932) was a British Writer, most famous for 'The Wind in the Willows', one of the classics of Children's literature. He also wrote 'The Reluctant Dragon', which was much later adapted into a Disney film.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - booktsunami - www.librarything.com

I managed to avoid somehow or other reading the complete Wind in the Willows until I was well into adulthood. Of course, it is probably impossible to escape bits of it such as Ratty's wise words ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - 1Avidfan - www.librarything.com

Inga Morre’s Illustrations are add so much to these classic stories and her abridged version is a treat to read aloud.

Contents

• Introduction: 7
• TWO The Open Road: 25
• THREE The Wild Wood: 40
• FOUR MrBadger: 53
• SEVEN The Piper at the Gates: 97
• EIGHT Toads Adventures: 109
• NINE Wayfarers All: 124
• ELEVEN Like Summer Tempests: 160
• TWELVE The Return of Ulysses: 178

About the author

Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh on March 3, 1859. When he was five years old, his mother died of scarlet fever and he nearly died himself, of the same disease. His father became an alcoholic and sent the children to Berkshire to live with relatives. They were later reunited with their father, but after a failed year, the children never heard from him again. Sometime later, one of his brothers died at the age of fifteen. He attended St. Edward's School as a child and intended to go on to Oxford University, but his relatives wanted him to go into banking. He worked in his uncle's office, in Westminster, for two years then went to work at the Bank of England as a clerk in 1879. He spent nearly thirty years there and became the Secretary of the Bank at the age of thirty-nine. He retired from the bank right before The Wind in the Willows was published in 1908. He wrote essays on topics that included smoking, walking and idleness. Many of the essays were published as the book Pagan Papers (1893) and the five orphan characters featured in the papers were developed into the books The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898). The Wind in the Willows (1908) was based on bedtime stories and letters to his son and it is where the characters Rat, Badger, Mole and Toad were created. In 1930, Milne's stage version was brought to another audience in Toad of Toad Hall. Grahame died on July 6, 1932.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Wind in the Willows; Children's Classics; Wordsworth Children's Classics; Wordsworth Collection; Wordsworth classics
• Author: Kenneth Grahame
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, revised
• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions, 1993
• ISBN: 185326122X, 9781853261220
• Length: 192 pages
• Subjects: Juvenile Fiction / Animals / General; Juvenile Fiction / Classics