The Wind in the Willows. by Grahame, Kenneth - 1908

8vo. London: Methuen & Co., 1908. 8vo, (6), 302 pp., frontispiece by Graham Robertson with tissue guard. Original blue green cloth with pictorial gilt designs on backstrip and upper cover, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Recased, backstrip relined, new endpapers, small stain in the top right margin up to p. 71. § First edition of the timeless adventures of Ratty, Mole, and Mr Toad, which originated in letters Grahame wrote to his seven-year old son "Mouse". Methuen wasn't sure what to make of the book, "no lighthearted story about a countryside community of animals but a long and ramifying fable" (Grolier 100), and released it on its adult rather than juvenile list, but children and their parents took it to heart at once and a second edition was required within a month of publication. By the time of the E.H. Shepard illustrated edition in 1932 the book was recognised as a children's classic. "One of the central classics of children's fiction" (The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature). Grolier Club, "One Hundred Books Famous in Children's Literature", 61. Cotsen I, 696.