Of all the children’s writers who published during the boom in classic children’s fiction between 1880 and 1914, Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) is perhaps the best known. His name is synonymous with The Wind in the Willows (1908), but Grahame enjoyed considerable literary success prior to the publication of this children’s classic. An employee of the Bank of England, he began a parallel career as a journalist in 1888 regularly contributing reviews and sketches to the National Observer and publishing stories in literary magazines, including the Yellow Book. In both his children’s writings and collections of essays, notably Pagan Papers (1893), The Golden Age (1895), and Dream Days (1898), Grahame creates fictional worlds that are evocative and enduring child-like fantasies about discovery and escape, which, as his first biographer Peter Green describes, “contrive to remain, ultimately,...
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Citation: Desmarais, Jane. "Kenneth Grahame". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 October 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1832, accessed 09 June 2026.]
