Kenneth Grahame
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For more information on Kenneth Grahame, visit Britannica.com.
Grahame, Kenneth (1859–1932), English author of The Wind in the Willows (1908), included a fairy story, ‘The Reluctant Dragon’, in Dream Days (1898), his second collection of stories about childhood. To the children in this book and its predecessor, The Golden Age (1895), fairy tales are reality, so that when the narrator in ‘The Finding of the Princess’ wanders into the garden of a great house, he assumes that the couple he finds there are a fairy princess and her prince. Similarly, he and his sister follow dragon footprints in the snow, and then are told a story about a peaceable and friendly dragon who is with much difficulty persuaded into a mock fight with St George to satisfy public expectation.
— Gillian Avery
Bibliography
See his biography, with letters and unpublished work by P. R. Chalmers (1933, repr. 1971); Inventing Wonderland (1995) by J. Wullschläger.
British writer known for his essays and children's books, notably The Wind in the Willows (1908).
Quotes:
"Glorious, stirring sight! 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 horizons! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!"
"Well, well, perhaps I am a bit of a talker. A popular fellow such as I am -- my friends get round me -- we chaff, we sparkle, we tell witty stories -- and somehow my tongue gets wagging. I have the gift of conversation. I've been told I ought to have a salon, whatever that may be."
| Born: | March 08 1859 Edinburgh, Scotland |
|---|---|
| Died: | July 06 1932 (aged 73) Pangbourne, Berkshire, England |
| Occupation: | Novelist |
| Genres: | Fiction |
Kenneth Grahame (March 8, 1859 – July 6, 1932) was a British writer, mainly of the sort of fiction and fantasy written for children but enjoyed equally if not more by adults. He is most famous for The Wind in the Willows (1908), one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon, which was much later adapted into a Disney movie.
Grahame was born in Edinburgh, Scotland but in early childhood, after being orphaned, moved to live with his grandmother on the banks of the River Thames in southern England. He was an outstanding pupil at St Edward's School in Oxford and wanted to attend Oxford University but was not allowed to do so by his guardian on grounds of cost. Instead he was sent to work at the Bank of England in 1879, and rose through the ranks until retiring as its Secretary in 1907 due to ill health. He was shot during an unsuccessful bank robbery a few years earlier, which may have precipitated his retirement.[citation needed]
Grahame's marriage to Elspeth Thomson was an unhappy one. They had only one child, a boy named Alastair, who was born blind in one eye and was plagued by health problems throughout his short life. Alastair eventually committed suicide on a railway track while an undergraduate at Oxford University, two days before his 20th birthday. Out of respect for Kenneth Grahame, Alastair's demise was recorded as an accidental death.[when? — see talk page]
Kenneth Grahame died in Pangbourne, Berkshire in 1932.
He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, near the grave of the
While still a young man, Grahame began to publish light stories in London periodicals such as the St. James Gazette. Some of these stories were collected and published as Pagan Papers in 1893, and, two years later, The Golden Age. These were followed by Dream Days in 1898, which contains The Reluctant Dragon. There is a parallel here to the great comic writer P.G. Wodehouse a generation later, also forced to work in a bank through lack of funds to go to university, also turning his hand to writing for amusement, also still in print and much loved a century later.
There is a ten-year gap between Grahame's penultimate book and the publication of his triumph, The Wind in the Willows. During this decade Grahame became a father. The wayward headstrong nature he saw in his little son he transformed into the swaggering Toad of Toad Hall, one of its four principal characters. Despite its success, he never attempted a sequel. Others, years after his death, have done that for him. The book was a hit and is still enjoyed by adults and children today, whether in book form or in the films.
Peter Green, the historian of Hellenistic Greece wrote a biography of Grahame in 1959 entitled "Kenneth Grahame 1859-1932" and subsequently wrote the introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition of "The Wind in the Willows".
| British Children's and Young Adults' Literature (1900-1949) |
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| NAME | Grahame, Kenneth |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | British novelist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 8, 1859 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Edinburgh, Scotland |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 6, 1932 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Pangbourne, Berkshire, England |
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