The Man in the Willows: The Life of Kenneth Grahame

by Matthew Dennison

A moving biography of Kenneth Grahame, author of the children's classic The Wind in the Willows , and of the vision of English pastoral life that inspired it.

During his regular days in London, Kenneth Grahame sat behind a mahogany desk as Secretary of the Bank of England; on weekends he retired to the house in the country that he shared with his fanciful wife, Elspeth, and their fragile son, Alistair, and took lengthy walks along the Thames in Berkshire, "tempted by the treasures of hedge and ditch; the rapt surprise of the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a field-mouse, the splash of a frog."

The result of these pastoral wanderings was his masterful creation of The Wind in the Willows , the enduring classic of children's literature; a cautionary tale for adult readers; a warning of the fragility of the English countryside; and an expression of fear at threatened social changes that, in the aftermath of the World War I, became a reality. Like its remarkable author, the book balances maverick tendencies with conservatism. Kenneth Grahame was an Edwardian pantheist whose work has a timeless appeal, an escapist whose withdrawal from reality took the form of time travel into his own past.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

Published February 5, 2019

About the author

Matthew Dennison is the author of five critically acclaimed works of non-fiction, including Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West, a Book of the Year in The Times, Spectator, Independent and Observer. He is a contributor to Country Life and lives in the United Kingdom.

Reviews

[Kris (My Novelesque Life) · Rating 3 out of 5]

RATING: 3 STARS
(Review Not on Blog)

I have seen The Wind in the Willows movie (1980s) but have yet to read the book. It has always been on my list, and this biography has motivated me to move it up. Yet, the biography was very brief and I felt like I did not get a real sens of who Kenneth Graham is. I will need to maybe read another biography or at least research him online. This is a good introduction to Graham and I am glad I read this one.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK book. Better to remember him for "The Wind in the Willows". He was an odd man, and his life only intermittently satisfying (or interesting). Weak 3 stars.
==================== Prelim stuff ================
Review of "The Making Of..." and this book: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-maki... [paywalled?]
Library has this one on order. Likely a skim, but on reserve. They don't have the shorter book.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was one of the most difficult books that I have read as it was both boring and depressing but still I persisted in reading this book. It was a sad , sad book about a sad life of Kenneth Grahame , his family and his wife and his child Alistair. I will never look at The Wind in the Willows the same after reading the biography of Kenneth Grahame. A story of tragedy for all involved.

[Jenny Preston · Rating 2 out of 5]

I recently re-read The Wind in the Willows with my kids - a fabulous adventure with anthropomorphized animals living by The River. It parallels The Odyssey in a British pastoral, nostalgic setting. When I saw this biography of the author Kenneth Grahame at the library, I grabbed it to get more background on this beloved story.

And oh, how unexpected this was. Grahame's life is nothing short of a tragedy from childhood on. His mother died, his father was absent, the various guardians overseeing his upbringing were in turns demanding and indifferent. He basically had Peter Pan syndrome, trapped in childhood and not progressing into adult ways of thinking. He was a bachelor afraid of women writing stories for and about children until he was pressured into an unhappy marriage in his 40s. They only had one child; the stories that became Willows were bedtime stories to their son he called Mouse. They were his escape from reality... his Neverland where he never had to grow up.

It was slow read and a sad one. Life is hard. All I'm left with is feeling sorry for Grahame and it puts a damper on my love for Willows, knowing the sorrow that lays behind Dennison did a good job incorporating quotes from books and letters; it's a well written biography all around. I just can't like it enough to give it more stars.

[Julie Stielstra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did like Wind in the Willows as a kid. I liked parts of it still as an adult (maybe it was partly the illustrations by Ernest Shepard or Arthur Rackham - take your pick - that charmed me so). So Matthew Dennison's more-or-less graceful and more-or-less sympathetic biography of Kenneth Grahame caught my eye, as I knew basically nothing about this author of a classic novel for children. Spoiler alert: I don't think I'd want to be in the room with him. His childhood - a time and a state of mind he clung to with pathological intensity - was a very mixed bag indeed. Mother dead of scarlet fever when he was five, and Dad was an alcoholic. The four kids were farmed out to maternal grandmother of limited means and limited interest in raising the brood; they lived in a falling-apart house in the country. But that became the golden era of Grahame's unending love for the river and countryside as depicted in his stories. But then Dad decided he wanted the kids back, so back they went, and when he fell apart too, they were shipped back to grandma. Of an imaginative and literary bent, Grahame desperately wanted to go to Oxford, but there was no money. An uncle got him a clerk's job at the Bank of England instead, where he spent his working life, writing essays and stories on the side. He valorized the perfections of children and childhood, of a sunlit and perfectly contented rural life, no modernization or grownups tolerated, living a bachelor existence where long rambles in the country with various male friends were the pinnacle of happiness.

As he neared forty, a pretty spinster regaled him with adoring verses, and he kind of, well, went along with it. It was just what people did. He kept away from her with long visits elsewhere, but they wrote each other truly nauseating letters written in some sort of Cockney baby-talk with phonetic spellings. Finally, her attentions were compromising enough that he caved and they married. By the time the honeymoon was over, so was the relationship - but she was pregnant. A premature baby boy, blind in one eye, came along, plunging it into disaster. Mama believed he was God's gift to the universe, and he grew up believing it too, a volatile, even violent boy. The boy was frequently shunted off for weeks-long trips to the seaside with a nurse while his parents resided in separate parts of the house. Grahame wrote letters to him, stories of mole and rat and badger and the river and the sea, with the riotous, selfish, irresponsible and unbearable Mr. Toad based on the child himself.

Here I stop. It was all so creepily weird and unhealthy I didn't want to know any more, though I did learn in other sources that the wretched son lay down on the railroad tracks to be dismembered by a train when he was 20. So... my fond memories of a charming childhood story were rather trashed by the discovery of the misery from which it grew. Grahame also put me in mind of two other roughly contemporary writing men, J.M. Barrie and Charles Dodgson - purveyors of classic literature for kids, and all of whom retained obsessions about children, about remaining children themselves, and none of them very healthy adult men. Dickens, too - a champion of children (Copperfield, Twist, Jo...) whose actual kids couldn't stand him. What a weird era, for all the wonderful art and literature it fostered. I kinda wish I hadn't even picked this book up.

[Cheryl Rowland · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a previous reader said this book is very difficult to read. I never knew much about Kennth Grahame but knowing that he wrote "The Wind in the Willows" would have thought that he was a more joyful person. But in reality the premature death of his mother was the beginning of the development of the adult Kenneth Grahame who seem to put up with the restrictions placed on him by his uncle who didn't allow him what he most desired a continued education. But for the uncle and his dictates me may not have never gotten the whimsical tale "The Wind in the Willows " with Badger, Mole, Rat and Toad to entertain us. Although I have to admit I mostly entertained by Walt Disney's portrayal of the stories within the book.

[Nancy Noble · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's always a danger reading about the lives of the authors of favorite children's books. Not everyone had a happy life like Beatrix Potter, although her life was certainly tinged with sadness. I loved "Wind in the willows" growing up, so I was excited to read this book. But by the end of the book I felt mostly sad about this poor man, and his unhappy life. I guess it just goes to show that out of something miserable can come a wonderful tale of animals who live "in the willows."
Beyond Grahame's life story, the writing in this book is excellent, and held my attention throughout. I liked having various photographs and illustrations to really bring the story to life.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

At first, I was regretting reading this book, as it made me dislike Grahame. The Wind in the Willows is one of my favorite books, so it was hard to be disillusioned with the author. Then I realized that one can be depressed by his hard upbringing and see someone who refused to cope with life, or see someone who found a creative way to cope with hardship. I choose the latter. His life certainly wasn't perfect, and some of his later choices weren't the best, but that he was able to create such enduring stories is a testament to his talent and imagination.

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing.
A detailed review of Grahame’s life - mostly through letters - looking for anything that inspired the characters and events in “The Wind in the Willows.” Grahame’s life was traumatic almost from birth to his death. As a result he did everything he could to stay within the innocent world of childhood full of love and wonder for nature.

One of the challenges for me was the author’s use of words and colloquialisms from mid-19th century England and Scotland without and definitions. It also would have helped if I had already read “The Wind in the Willows.”

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sad but interesting biography of Kenneth Grahame, the author of Wind in the Willows. I’d be curious to read other biographies of this author. Though this book was clearly well-researched, I sometimes wondered about the biographer’s conclusions. Nevertheless, I enjoyed learning about the author and especially some of the details that led to Willows.

[Adrian Romero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written. I did not expect such a tragic story about the author of this book that I always found fascinating.

[Gigi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not finish.
This reads like one of my high-school children trying to pad a term paper, and me having to edit it.

[Rachel Croce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spoiler alert: he names his actual child “mouse”