The Wind in the Willows

Table of Contents

FROM THE PAGES OF THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

Title Page

Copyright Page

KENNETH GRAHAME

THE WORLD OF KENNETH GRAHAME AND THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

Introduction

Chapter 1 - The River Bank

Chapter 2 - The Open Road

Chapter 3 - The Wild Wood

Chapter 4 - Mr. Badger

Chapter 5 - Dulce Domum

Chapter 6 - Mr. Toad

Chapter 7 - The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Chapter 8 - Toad’s Adventures

Chapter 9 - Wayfarers All

Chapter 10 - The Further Adventures of Toad

Chapter 11 - ‘Like Summer Tempests Came His Tears’

Chapter 12 - The Return of Ulysses

ENDNOTES

INSPIRED BY THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

FOR FURTHER READING

FROM THE PAGES OF THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

‘Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.’ (p. 10)

Packing the basket was not quite such pleasant work as unpacking the basket. It never is. (p. 15 )

This day was only the first of many similar ones for the emancipated Mole, each of them longer and fuller of interest as the ripening summer moved onward. He learnt to swim and to row, and entered into the joy of running water; and with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them. (p. 18)

‘The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The
only
way to travel! Here today—in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped—always somebody else’s horizon!’ (p. 28)

‘Who ever heard of a door-mat telling any one anything? They simply don’t do it. They are not that sort at all. Door-mats know their place.’ (p. 40)

‘It was the talk of the burrows.’ (p. 49)

Villagers all, this frosty tide,

Let your doors swing open wide,

Though wind may follow, and snow beside,

Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;

Joy shall be yours in the morning! (p. 64)

‘It’s for your own good, Toady, you know.’ (p. 74)

‘Rouse thee, old loon, and take over from us this vile Toad, a criminal of deepest guilt and matchless artfulness and resource. Watch and ward him with all thy skill; and mark thee well, grey-beard, should aught untoward befall, thy old head shall answer for his—and a murrain on both of them!’ (p. 81)

‘I feel just as you do, Mole; simply dead tired, though not body-tired.

It’s lucky we’ve got the stream with us, to take us home. Isn’t it jolly to feel the sun again, soaking into one’s bones! And hark to the wind playing in the reeds!’ (p. 91 )

The clever men at Oxford

Know all that there is to be knowed.

But they none of them know one half as much

As intelligent Mr. Toad! (p. 130)

Toad, with no one to check his statements or to criticize in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself go. Indeed, much that he related belonged more properly to the category of what-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of it-in-time-instead-of ten-minutes-afterwards. Those are always the best and raciest adventures; and why should they not be truly ours, as much as the somewhat inadequate things that really come off? (p. 151 )

Bang! go the drums!

The trumpeters are tooting and the soldiers are saluting,

And the cannon they are shooting and the motor-cars are hooting,

As the—Hero—comes!

Shout—Hoo-ray!

And let each one of the crowd try and shout it very loud,

In honour of an animal of whom you’re justly proud,

For it’s Toad’s—great—day! (p. 162)

Published by Barnes & Noble Books
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The Wind in the Willows was first published in 1908.

Published in 2005 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new
Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology Inspired By, Comments & Questions,
and For Further Reading.

Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading

Copyright © 2005 by Gardner McFall.

Note on Kenneth Grahame, The World of Kenneth Grahame and
The Wind in the Willows, Inspired by The Wind in the Willows, and Comments & Questions
Copyright © 2005 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

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The Wind in the Willows

ISBN 1-59308-256-7

eISBN : 978-1-411-43350-2

LC Control Number 2004112838

Produced and published in conjunction with:
Fine Creative Media, Inc.
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Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher

Printed in the United States of America

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FIRST PRINTING

KENNETH GRAHAME

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 8, 1859, Kenneth Grahame was five years old when his mother died of scarlet fever following the birth of her fourth child. Kenneth’s despondent father put his children in the care of their maternal grandmother and, except for a brief interlude, did not see or communicate with them again. A relatively isolated child, Kenneth developed a passion for the landscape around his grandmother’s home in Cookham Dene, Berkshire. That lush area along the Thames stayed in his imagination and was later to play a large part in his writings; in time he would live there with his wife and son.

Grahame attended boarding school at St. Edward’s in Oxford, where he excelled at sports and his studies. These accomplishments were muted by the death of his brother William and by his family’s refusal to allow him to study at Oxford University. Instead Grahame was urged to move to London, where in 1879 he took a position as a gentleman clerk at the Bank of London. Rather than mourn his lost opportunities, he worked diligently and spent his considerable free time playing sports and cultivating literary interests. Friendship with acclaimed academic F. J. Furnivall widened his circle of friends, and Furnivall advised the young man as he began writing short essays and poems.

After publishing his first works under a pseudonym in the National Observer, Grahame combined some of his light prose pieces and published them under his own name as Pagan Papers in 1893. Modest success followed, along with more publications: The Golden Age (1895), The Headswoman (1898), and Dream Days (1898). Relatively conservative politically, Grahame nevertheless published in the same journal as Oscar Wilde and formed friendships with writers of different opinions and backgrounds. His double life as bank worker and writer continued through the end of the century. In 1899 Grahame married Elspeth Thomson; they had a child, a partially blind son named Alastair, a year later.

Royalties from the sale of his books allowed Grahame to resign from the bank, and the family settled in Cookham Dene, where Grahame had spent his childhood. Although he wrote little in this period, Grahame told his son stories that gave him the idea for his great novel The Wind in the Willows. The book was published in 1908, and, after a slow beginning, proved immensely popular; it has remained so down to the present day. Grahame wrote little after the book’s release, withdrawing further into solitude in the countryside. His quiet way of life was shattered in 1920 by his son’s death. To cope with the loss, Grahame and Elspeth spent years traveling through Europe before returning to England in 1924. Kenneth Grahame died in Pangbourne, Berkshire, on July 6, 1932, and is buried in Holywell Churchyard in Oxford.

THE WORLD OF KENNETH GRAHAME AND THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS