Kenneth Grahame

Grahame’s early life was both tragic and idyllic. When he was five years old, his mother died of complications after childbirth. At this point, Grahame’s father, a lawyer and an alcoholic, sent his four children to live with their maternal grandmother. Grahame’s grandmother lived in a spacious but run-down house near the River Thames; biographers believe that it was Grahame’s grandmother’s home that inspired the setting of The Wind in the Willows. Though Grahame was a good student and wanted to attend University of Oxford, his father and grandmother wouldn’t let him go due to the cost of tuition. They got him a job with the Bank of England, where he worked for almost 30 years. During his time at the bank he married Elspeth Thompson; they had one son, Alistair, who suffered from a variety of health conditions. Grahame retired in 1908, and many believe he retired because he was almost killed in a shooting incident at work several years earlier. Just before his retirement, Grahame and his wife took a trip—and Alistair agreed to stay home with his nanny, provided Grahame wrote him letters with bedtime stories. These letters eventually became The Wind in the Willows, which Grahame published right after his retirement. The Wind in the Willows has since become one of the most beloved works of children’s literature, and it has been translated into a number of languages and adapted for the screen and stage on several occasions. Historians and biographers suggest that Grahame never fully recovered after Alistair committed suicide at age 19 in 1920. When Grahame died in 1932, he was buried in the same grave as his son.