Kenneth Grahame

The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame

Kenneth Grahame was born on 8 March 1859 in Edinburgh. When he was 5, his mother died from puerperal fever, and his father, who had a drinking problem, gave the care of his four children over to their grandmother, who lived in Cookham Dean in Berkshire. There they lived in a spacious but dilapidated home, The Mount, in extensive grounds by the River Thames, and were introduced to the riverside and boating by their uncle, David Ingles, curate at Cookham Dean church.[2]At Christmas 1865 the chimney of the house collapsed and the children moved to Fern Hill Cottage in Cranbourne, Berkshire. In 1866, their father tried to overcome his drinking problem and took the children back to live with him in Argyll, Scotland, but after a year they returned to their grandmother's house in Cranbourne, where Kenneth lived until he entered St Edward's School, Oxford in 1868.[3] During his early years at St. Edwards the boys were free to explore the old city with its quaint shops, historic buildings, and cobbled streets, St Giles' Fair, the idyllic upper reaches of the River Thames, and the nearby countryside.[4]Grahame married Elspeth Thomson, the daughter of Robert William Thomson in 1899, when he was 40; the next year they had their only child, a boy named Alastair (whose nickname was "Mouse") born premature, blind in one eye, and plagued by health problems throughout his life.[5] When Alastair was about four years old, Grahame would tell him bedtime stories, some of which were about a toad, and on his frequent boating holidays without his family he would write further tales of Toad, Mole, Ratty, and Badger in letters to Alastair.[3]In 1908 Grahame took early retirement from his job at the Bank of England and moved with his wife and son to an old farmhouse in Blewbury, where he used the bedtime stories he had told Alastair as a basis for the manuscript of The Wind in the Willows.