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 (19.6 x 23.2 cm); woodcut frontispiece by Graham Robertson, some spotting and browning, mostly peripheral and primarly affecting preliminary leaves but not much better than most examples, a few fore-edges roughly cut more notable to pp 157 & 159, but not affecting text, one worm hole affecting the base of pp 160 - 176 at the gutter, and then two affecting the extreme bottom edge of pp 225 - 280 but neither affecting the text and confined to the extreme edge; publisher's green cloth, decoration and titles to upper board and spine gilt, top edge gilt, others untrimmed, as published, light dust-soiling, professional restoration to spine-ends and spine itself rather dulled, browning to endpapers (as usual) with contemporary gift inscription to upper free endpaper, dated 1908, the gilt block to the upper cover still bright and a firm, very good copy of one of the cornerstone works of Edwardian literature.