The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows

Cover of the first edition
Author Kenneth Grahame
Illustrator E. H. Shepard
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre Children's novel
Publisher Methuen
Publication date
June 15, 1908
Text The Wind in the Willows at Wikisource

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.

In 1908, Grahame retired from his position as secretary of the Bank of England. 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 – as the book says, "simply messing about in boats" – and expanding the bedtime stories he had earlier told his son Alistair into a manuscript for the book.

The novel was in its 31st printing when playwright A. A. Milne adapted part of it for the stage as Toad of Toad Hall in 1929. In 2003, The Wind in the Willows was listed at number 16 in the BBC's survey The Big Read.[1]

Background

Main article: Kenneth Grahame

Kenneth Grahame was born on 8 March 1859 in Edinburgh, but when he was 5, his mother died from puerperal fever, and his father, who had a drinking problem, gave the care of his four children over to their grandmother, who lived in Cookham Dean in Berkshire. There they lived in a spacious but dilapidated home, "The Mount", in extensive grounds by the River Thames, and were introduced to the riverside and boating by their uncle, David Ingles, curate at Cookham Dean church.[2] Two years later, at Christmas 1865, the chimney of the house collapsed and the children moved to Fern Hill Cottage in Cranbourne, Berkshire. 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 started school at St Edward's School, Oxford in 1868.[3] During his early years at St. Edwards the boys had freedom 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.[4]

Grahame married Elspeth Thomson in 1899; they had only one child, a boy named Alastair (whose nickname was "Mouse") born blind in one eye and plagued by health problems throughout his life.[5] When Alastair was about four years old, Grahame would tell him bedtime stories, some of which were about a toad, and when Grahame holidayed alone he would write further tales of Toad, Mole, Ratty and Badger in letters to Alastair.[3]

In 1908 Grahame took early retirement from his job at the Bank of England and moved with his wife and son to an old farmhouse in Blewbury, where he used the bedtime stories he had told Alastair as a basis for the manuscript of The Wind in the Willows.[3]

Plot summary

With the arrival of spring and fine weather outside, the good-natured Mole loses patience with spring cleaning. He flees his underground home, emerging to take in the air and ends up at the river, which he has never seen before. Here he meets Rat (a water vole), who at this time of year spends all his days in, on and close by the river. Rat takes Mole for a ride in his rowing boat. They get along well and spend many more days boating, with Rat teaching Mole the ways of the river.

One summer day, Rat and Mole disembark near the grand Toad Hall and pay a visit to Toad. Toad is rich, jovial, friendly and kind-hearted, but aimless and conceited; he regularly becomes obsessed with current fads, only to abandon them as quickly as he took them up. Having recently given up boating, Toad's current craze is his horse-drawn caravan. He persuades the reluctant Rat and willing Mole to join him on a trip. Toad soon tires of the realities of camp life, and sleeps in the following day to avoid chores. Later that day, a passing motor car scares the horse, causing the caravan to overturn into a ditch. Rat threatens to have the law on the car driver, while Mole calms the horse, but Toad's craze for caravan travel is immediately replaced by a motor car obsession.

Mole wants to meet the respected but elusive Badger, who lives deep in the Wild Wood, but Rat—knowing that Badger does not appreciate visits—tells Mole to be patient and wait for Badger to pay them a visit himself. Nevertheless, on a snowy winter's day, while the seasonally somnolent Rat dozes, Mole impulsively goes to the Wild Wood to explore, hoping to meet Badger. He gets lost in the woods, sees many "evil faces" among the wood's less-welcoming denizens, succumbs to fright and panic and hides, trying to stay warm, among the sheltering roots of a tree. Rat, finding Mole gone, guesses his mission from the direction of Mole's tracks and, equipping himself with two pistols and a stout cudgel, goes in search, finding him as snow begins to fall in earnest. Attempting to find their way home, Rat and Mole quite literally stumble across Badger's home—Mole barks his shin on the boot scraper on Badger's doorstep. Badger—en route to bed in his dressing-gown and slippers—nonetheless warmly welcomes Rat and Mole to his large and cozy underground home, providing them with hot food and dry clothes. Badger learns from his visitors that Toad has crashed seven cars, has been in hospital three times, and has spent a fortune on fines. Though nothing can be done at the moment (it being winter), they resolve that when the time is right they will make a plan to protect Toad from himself; they are, after all, his friends, and are worried about his well-being.

With the arrival of summer, Badger visits Mole and Rat to take action over Toad's self-destructive obsession. The three of them go to Toad Hall, and Badger tries talking Toad out of his behaviour, to no avail. They put Toad under house arrest, with themselves as the guards, until Toad changes his mind. Feigning illness, Toad bamboozles the Water Rat (who is on guard duty at the time) and escapes. Badger and Mole are cross with Rat for his gullibility, but draw comfort because they need no longer waste their summer guarding Toad. However, Badger and Mole continue to live in Toad Hall in the hope that Toad may return. Meanwhile, Toad orders lunch at The Red Lion Inn, and then sees a motor car pull into the courtyard. He steals the car, drives it recklessly and is caught by the police. He is sent to prison for 20 years.

Toad escapes from prison

In prison, Toad gains the sympathy of the gaoler's daughter, who helps him to escape disguised as a washerwoman. Though free again, Toad is without money or possessions other than the clothes upon his back. He manages to board a railway engine manned by a sympathetic driver, which is then pursued by a special train loaded with policemen, detectives and prison warders. Toad jumps the train, and still disguised as a washerwoman, comes across a horse-drawn barge. The barge's owner offers him a lift in exchange for Toad's services as a washerwoman. After botching the wash, Toad gets into a fight with the barge-woman, who tosses him into the canal. In revenge, Toad makes off with the barge horse, which he then sells to a gypsy. Toad subsequently flags down a passing car, which happens to be the very one he stole earlier. The car owners, not recognising Toad in his disguise, permit him to drive their car. Once behind the wheel, he is repossessed by his former passion and drives furiously, declaring his true identity to the passengers who try to seize him. This leads to the car landing in a horse-pond, after which Toad flees once more. Pursued by police, he runs accidentally into a river, which carries him by sheer chance to the house of Rat.

Toad now hears from Rat that Toad Hall has been taken over by weasels and stoats from the Wild Wood, who have driven out Mole and Badger. Although upset at the loss of his house, Toad realises what good friends he has and how badly he has behaved. Badger then arrives and announces that he knows of a secret tunnel into Toad Hall through which the enemies may be attacked. Armed to the teeth, Badger, Rat, Mole and Toad enter via the tunnel and pounce upon the unsuspecting Wild Wooders who are holding a celebratory party. Having driven away the intruders, Toad holds a banquet to mark his return, during which (for a change) he behaves both quietly and humbly. He makes up for his earlier excesses by seeking out and compensating those he has wronged, and the four friends live out their lives happily ever after.

In addition to the main narrative, the book contains several independent short stories featuring Rat and Mole. These appear for the most part between the chapters chronicling Toad's adventures, and are often omitted from abridgements and dramatizations. The chapter "Dulce Domum" describes Mole's return to his home, accompanied by Rat, in which, despite finding it in a terrible mess after his abortive spring clean, he rediscovers, with Rat's help, a familiar comfort. "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" tells how Mole and Rat search for Otter's missing son Portly, whom they find in the care of the god Pan. (Pan removes their memories of this meeting "lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure".) Finally in "Wayfarers All", Ratty shows a restless side to his character when he is sorely tempted to join a Sea Rat on his travelling adventures.

Main characters

Editions

"The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", frontispiece to a 1913 edition by Paul Bransom

The book was originally published as plain text, but many illustrated, comic and annotated versions have been published over the years. Notable illustrators include Paul Bransom (1913), Ernest H. Shepard (1933), Arthur Rackham (1940), Tasha Tudor (1966), Michael Hague (1980), Scott McKowen (2005), and Robert Ingpen (2007).

The most popular illustrations are probably by E. H. Shepard, originally published in 1931, and believed to be authorised as Grahame was pleased with the initial sketches, though he did not live to see the completed work.[6]

The Wind in the Willows was the last work illustrated by Arthur Rackham. The book with his illustrations was issued posthumously in a limited edition by the Folio Society with 16 color plates in 1940 in the US. It was not issued with the Rackham illustrations in the UK until 1950.

The Folio Society 2006 edition featured 85 illustrations, 35 in colour, by Charles van Sandwyk. A fancier centenary edition was produced two years later.

Michel Plessix created a Wind in the Willows watercolour comic album series, which helped to introduce the stories to France. They have been translated into English by Cinebook Ltd.

Patrick Benson re-illustrated the story in 1994 and HarperCollins published it in 1994 together with the William Horwood sequels The Willows in Winter , Toad Triumphant  and The Willows and Beyond . It was published in the US in 1995 by St Martin's Press.

Inga Moore's abridged edition features text and illustrations paced so that a line of text, such as "oh my oh my", also serves as a caption.

Barnes & Noble Classics featured an introduction by Gardner McFall in 2007. New York, ISBN 978-1-59308-265-9

Belknap Press, of Harvard University Press, published Seth Lerer's annotated edition in 2009.[7]

W. W. Norton published Annie Gauger and Brian Jacques’s annotated edition in 2009.[8]

Jamie Hendry Productions published a special edition of the novel in 2015 and donated it to schools in Plymouth and Salford to celebrate the World Premiere of the musical version of The Wind in the Willows by Julian Fellowes, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe.[9]

Reception

A number of publishers rejected the manuscript, and it was not until October 1908, after some campaigning by President Theodore Roosevelt, that the book was finally published by Methuen and Co. The critics, who were hoping for a third volume in the style of Graham's earlier works; The Golden Age and Dream Days, generally gave negative reviews.[3] The public loved it, however, and within a few years it sold in such numbers that many reprints were required. In 1909, Roosevelt wrote to Grahame to tell him that he had "read it and reread it, and have come to accept the characters as old friends".[10]

In The Enchanted Places, Christopher Robin Milne says of The Wind in the Willows:

A book that we all greatly loved and admired and read aloud or alone, over and over and over: The Wind in the Willows. This book is, in a way, two separate books put into one. There are, on the one hand, those chapters concerned with the adventures of Toad; and on the other hand there are those chapters that explore human emotions—the emotions of fear, nostalgia, awe, wanderlust. My mother was drawn to the second group, of which "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" was her favourite, read to me again and again with always, towards the end, the catch in the voice and the long pause to find her handkerchief and blow her nose. My father, on his side, was so captivated by the first group that he turned these chapters into the children's play, Toad of Toad Hall. In this play one emotion only is allowed to creep in: nostalgia.

Adaptations

Stage

Film and television

Radio

The BBC has broadcast a number of radio productions of the story.

Dramatisations include:

Abridged readings include:

Kenneth Williams also did a version of the book for radio.

In 2002 Paul Oakenfold produced a Trance Soundtrack for the story, aired on the Galaxy FM show Urban Soundtracks. These mixes blended classic stories with a mixture of dance and contemporary music.

Sequels and alternative versions

In 1983 Dixon Scott published A Fresh Wind in the Willows, which not only predates Horwood's sequels (see below) by several years but also includes some of the same incidents, including a climax in which Toad steals a Bleriot monoplane.

William Horwood created several sequels to The Wind in the Willows: The Willows in Winter, Toad Triumphant, The Willows and Beyond, and The Willows at Christmas.

Jacqueline Kelly published "Return to the Willows" in 2012.

Jan Needle's Wild Wood was published in 1981 with illustrations by William Rushton (ISBN 0-233-97346-X). It is a re-telling of the story of The Wind in the Willows from the point of view of the working-class inhabitants of the Wild Wood. For them, money is short and employment hard to find. They have a very different perspective on the wealthy, easy, careless lifestyle of Toad and his friends.

Awards

Inspiration

Mapledurham House in Oxfordshire was an inspiration for Toad Hall.,[17] although, Hardwick House also makes this claim.[18]

The village of Lerryn, Cornwall claims to be the setting for the book.[19]

Simon Winchester suggested that the character of Ratty was based on Frederick Furnivall, a keen oarsman and acquaintance of Kenneth Grahame.[20]

The Scotsman[21] and Oban Times[22] suggested The Wind in the Willows  was inspired by the Crinan Canal because Grahame spent some of his childhood in Ardrishaig.

There is a theory that the idea for the story arose when its author saw a water vole beside the River Pang in Berkshire, southern England. A 29 hectare extension to the nature reserve at Moor Copse, near Tidmarsh Berkshire, was acquired in January 2007 by the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust.[23]

References

  1. "The Big Read Top 200". BBC. April 2003. Retrieved 17 January 2015..
  2. Green, Peter (1983). "Chapter 1: Dragons and Pterodactyles 1859–67". Beyond the Wild Wood: The World of Kenneth Grahame Author of The Wind in the Willows. New York: Facts on File. pp. 9–24. ISBN 0-87196-740-5.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Biography". www.kennethgrahamesociety.net. The Kenneth Grahame Society. Retrieved 1 March 2016.
  4. Green, Peter (1983). "Chapter 2: The Spell of Oxford". Beyond the Wild Wood: The World of Kenneth Grahame Author of The Wind in the Willows. New York: Facts on File. pp. 29–40. ISBN 0-87196-740-5.
  5. Robin & Valerie Bootle (1990). The Story of Cookham. private, Cookham. p. 188. ISBN 0-9516276-0-0.
  6. E. H. Shepard ill. ed, Charles Scribner's Sons, US, introduction.
  7. Grahame 2009b.
  8. Grahame 2009.
  9. "Wind in the Willows musical set for world premiere". BBC News.
  10. "First edition of The Wind in the Willows sells for £32,400". The Guardian. Mar 24, 2010. Retrieved 4 November 2014..
  11. "The Wind in the Willows: short play or musical adaptation for children". David-gooderson.co.uk. 2005-07-30. Retrieved 2013-06-17.
  12. "Julian Fellowes to write Wind in the Willows Musical".
  13. "The Wind in the Willows (1987) (TV)". IMDB. Retrieved 16 February 2009.
  14. "IMDb"..
  15. "Rotten Tomatoes: del Toro on Why Wind in the Willows Went Away". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 9 May 2009.
  16. Christine Paik (2002-03-19). "NPR report". NPR. Retrieved 2013-02-26.
  17. West, Mark (2003). A Children's Literature Tour of Great Britain. Scarecrow Press Inc. pp. 49 to 51. Retrieved 17 January 2015.
  18. Winn, Christopher (2010). I Never Knew That About the River Thames. Ebury Publishing. pp. 84 to 85. Retrieved 17 January 2015.
  19. "The animals of Wind in the Willows". Inside Out. BBC. 2005-01-10. Retrieved 2013-02-26.
  20. Winchester, Simon. The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  21. "Wind whispered in the Scottish willows first". The Scotsman. 16 April 2005. Retrieved 2013-02-26.
  22. "Was Crinan the seed for Wind in the Willows?". Oban Times. 11 January 2008. Retrieved 2013-02-26.
  23. "Ratty's Paradise joins eight new reserves", Natural World, p. 10, Spring 2007.
  24. Travis M. Andrews (October 5, 2016). "Historian tortured, killed for first edition of 'Wind in the Willows,' prosecutor tells British jury". Washington Post. Retrieved October 5, 2016.

Further reading

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Works

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