The stories of Ratty, Toad and Badger. “One of the central classics of children’s fiction, The Wind in the Willows was Grahame’s fourth book. It began life as a series of bedtime stories told to his son Alastair, known as Mouse. The first of these was told on Mouse’s fourth birthday, 12 May 1904, and concerned ‘moles, giraffes & water-rats’, these being the animals the boy had selected for subject Probably the stories continued at intervals over the next three years; certainly a lengthy narrative in which Toad played the principal part (and in which there were no giraffes) had been begun by May 1907. During that month Mouse was on holiday on the South Coast with his governess, Miss Stott, and his father wrote him a series of story-letters The letters, some of which were addressed to ‘Michael Robinson’, Mouse’s pet name for himself, continued every few days until September (there are 15 in all, with one apparently missing from the series); they describe Toad’s adventures much as in the published book, but pay no more that cursory attention to Rat, Mole, and Badger” (The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature).”

This edition follows the same text as the 1908 issue by Methuen & Co. Charles van Sandwyk is an award winning Canadian artist.