The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame
The Wind in the Willows
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Mole abandons his spring cleaning, meets Rat on the river bank, and discovers messing about in boats. What follows is a summer of picnics, a night lost in the Wild Wood, and the increasingly expensive enthusiasms of Mr Toad, whose latest is the motor-car — a passion that will cost him his house and require his friends to get it back.
About the book
Published in 1908 out of bedtime stories and letters written to the author’s son, The Wind in the Willows begins with Mole throwing down his spring cleaning and coming up into the sunlight, where he meets Water Rat and is taught to mess about in boats. The riverbank year that follows — picnics, a snowbound night in the Wild Wood, Badger’s house under the tree roots — is interrupted by Toad, whose fixation on motor-cars takes him through a courtroom, a dungeon and a washerwoman’s disguise while weasels occupy his ancestral hall. Two books sit inside one cover, and readers have always divided over which they came for: the comic novel of Toad’s disgrace and restoration, and the quieter one about home, the seasons and the pull of the road. Grahame was Secretary of the Bank of England while he wrote it, and the riverbank is the life he was not living.
Characters
Mole — Protagonist
A home-loving creature who abandons his spring cleaning and discovers the river, and everything else, at once.
Rat — Mole’s friend
A water rat, poet and boatman who believes there is nothing worth doing but messing about in boats.
Toad — Toad of Toad Hall
Wealthy, boastful and helplessly enthusiastic, ruined in turn by caravans, motor-cars and his own conceit.
Badger — Elder
The gruff recluse of the Wild Wood, respected by everyone and the only one Toad will listen to.
Otter — Riverbanker
A cheerful neighbour of the riverbank whose lost cub leads to the strangest chapter in the book.
The Chief Weasel — Antagonist
Leader of the Wild Wooders who take over Toad Hall the moment its owner is in prison.
About the author
Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932) was a Scottish-born writer who spent his working life at the Bank of England and rose to be its Secretary. The Wind in the Willows grew out of bedtime stories and then letters written to his son Alastair, and when he finally published it in 1908 the reviewers, who wanted another book of essays, did not know what to make of it. He had taken early retirement two years before, after a stranger walked into the Bank and fired three shots at him. A. A. Milne's stage version, Toad of Toad Hall, made the book a fixture.