The Wind in the Willows.

'The Wind in the Willows, is a far more interesting book than its popular and often juvenile audience might suggest. First, it is the work of a writer who had known considerable success in the 1890s as a young contemporary of Oscar Wilde and also an admired contributor to the literary quarterly The Yellow Book. At that point, Grahame was employed by the Bank of England but, still in his 20s, was publishing stories in literary magazines, work that became collected in Dream Days (1895) and an even more successful publication, The Golden Age (1898).

The text of The Wind in the Willows also encrypts a family tragedy. In 1899, Grahame married and had one child, a boy named Alastair who was troubled with health problems and a difficult personality, culminating in the boy's eventual suicide, the cause of much parental anguish. When Grahame finally retired from the Bank of England (as Secretary) in 1908, he could concentrate on the stories he had been telling his son, the stories of the Thames riverbank on which Grahame himself had grown up. So The Wind in the Willows is a tale steeped in nostalgia, and inspired by a father's love for his only son.' (Robert McCrum)

First edition, first impression; 8vo (196 x 232 mm); tissue guarded, frontispiece illustration by Graham Robertson, fore-edge of p. 205 roughly cut but not affecting text, some spotting, mostly confined to a few preliminary terminal leaves, especially blank endpapers, as usual, otherwise mostly clean and bright; publisher's green cloth, decoration and titles to upper board and spine gilt, top edge gilt, others untrimmed, as published, rubbing to extremities, spine darkened with bumped head and tail, browning to fore-edge, otherwise an unusually firm very good copy of one of the cornerstone works of Edwardian literature.