Kenneth Grahame

Kenneth Grahame was born on 8 March 1859 in Edinburgh, the son of an advocate. In 1864 his mother died of scarlet fever, and the children were sent to live with their grandmother at Cookham Dean in Berkshire. Their father moved to France and had no further contact with them. At nine Grahame became a boarder at St Edward's School in Oxford, where he did well and became head boy.

He hoped to go to Oxford University, but the uncle who supported the children refused to pay, and in 1879 he joined the Bank of England as a clerk. He stayed nearly thirty years and rose to be its Secretary, one of its three highest officers. In his spare time he wrote essays and stories, collected in Pagan Papers, The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898). The Golden Age made him famous. In 1899 he married Elspeth Thomson, and their only child, Alastair, was born in 1900.

Grahame told Alastair bedtime stories about a mole, a beaver and a water-rat, and wrote him letters with stories about a toad, which have been seen as the source for The Wind in the Willows, the book on this site. It was published in 1908, four months after he left the Bank. Reviews were mostly unfavourable, but it sold well and went on selling.

After Alastair's death in 1920, Grahame and Elspeth went to Italy and spent several years travelling, then settled at Pangbourne, where he died on 6 July 1932. He left the royalties from his works to the Bodleian Library.

Sources: wikipedia.org