WIND IN THE WILLOWS by GRAHAME, Kenneth - 1908

Second edition, published in the same month as the first (October), with a frontispiece by Graham Robertson showing three cherubic children playing by a waterfall while an otter slips into the pool beside them, with the original tissue-guard. Post 8vo (7.75 x 5.25 ins); pp (iv) + 302 + (2); Publisher's original green cloth blocked in gilt with the figures of Pan and the book's animal characters, Mole, Ratty and Toad, the latter appearing on the spine in his driving goggles. Gilt on front really bright, a touch faded on the spine, which is also slightly rubbed at head and tail. Top edge gilt, although now rather toned down by dust. Contemporary inked inscription to front free endpaper, "To Marietta Grazebrook with love & all good wishes, from Lilian Cox". A few spots of foxing to endpapers and the odd dirty thumb print in the contents. Tips of corners slightly rubbed. A very good copy.

The Wind in the Willows (the original title was the less euphonic Wind in the Reeds), was first published in New York on 4 October 1908, and in London four days later. The publisher, Algernon Methuen, listed it as an adult not a juvenile book. It was certainly more than a light-hearted narrative about a riverside community of animals. Grahame's biographer, Matthew Dennison, called it "an aggressively conservative book," targeting "socialism and any form of faddishness or craving for novelty, Toad's great weakness". (Rupert Neelands) One of the central classics of children's fiction, it was Grahame's fourth book and 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 ... (Oxford Companion to Children's Literature)