Grahame, Kenneth

Grahame, Kenneth (1859-1932), author, b. Edinburgh, Scotland.

Kenneth Grahame worked in the Bank of England for nearly thirty years, retiring through illness in 1907.

During this time he had written essays, poems and stories and two books, The Golden Age (1895) and Dream days (1898). The second of these contained a fairy story, The Reluctant Dragon, which was very popular (It was made into a movie by Walt Disney in 1943).

In 1904 Grahame made up a story about a mole and a rat for his four-year-old son, Alistair, and afterwards wrote it down and called it The Wind in the Willows. It was published in 1908 and it made Grahame famous. Over one hundred editions of the book have been published since then and it is still loved today.

In 1929 the book was turned into a play, Toad of Toad Hall, by A. A. Milne, and this is still often performed.