SOURCE: Kuznets, Lois R. “The Mythological Present of The Wind in the Willows.” In Kenneth Grahame, pp. 97-122. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987.

In the following essay, Kuznets provides a thematic and stylistic analysis of The Wind in the Willows, focusing on mythological aspects of the children's book.

Grahame's many readers waited nearly a decade for yet another sequel to the stories about the five Golden Age children. The Wind in the Willows, appearing in England in October 1908, disappointed them; the manuscript had also disappointed Grahame's English editor, John Lane, who would not chance it, and the American magazine, Everybody's, which, through Constance Smedley, had first solicited the new work. Methuen in England and Scribner's in America thus took a gamble, the latter at the urging of the recently won-over Teddy Roosevelt. This was a gamble neither publisher had reason to regret in later years.

Contemporary critics were not as...