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. Grahame was also an admired contributor to the literary quarterly The Yellow Book, at which point he was employed by the Bank of England but, still in his 20s, was publishing stories in literary magazines. This work was 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 (as 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)