The Annotated Wind in the Willows (The Annotated Books)

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To celebrate The Wind in the Willows, scholar Annie Gauger offers this beautifully illustrated edition of Kenneth Grahame’s classic—complete with rare photographs of the Grahames, their friends, and illustrations from the first five editions. “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”—the Water Rat to the Mole An instant bestseller upon its initial publication in 1908, The Wind in the Willows has become one of the beloved stories of all time. How could Ratty and Mole have known when they took to the river over one hundred years ago that they would begin a phenomenon that would produce one of the most oft-quoted lines in British literature, and inspire everyone from the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh to Pink Floyd? Drawing from more than a decade of research, Annie Gauger, one of the world’s leading experts on Kenneth Grahame and The Wind in the Willows, now presents a fascinating new annotated edition that reintroduces readers to Otter, curmudgeonly Badger, and rollicking, boastful Toad, while revealing the secrets behind this treasured classic. In The Annotated Wind in the Willows, readers will discover the sheer joy of the original text, restored to the original 1908 version, illustrated with hundreds of full-color images—including the beloved drawings by E. H. Shepard and Arthur Rackham. This edition also includes Shepard’s famous map of the Wild Wood and rarely seen images by illustrators Graham Robertson, Paul Bransom, Nancy Barnhart, and Wyndham Payne. In an illuminating preface, Gauger explains how Grahame came to write the novel, which began as a bedtime story and then became a series of letters he wrote to his son, Alastair. This edition reproduces the original letters in their entirety and includes nearly a thousand delightful annotations on everything from automobiles (Toad drove an Armstrong Hardcastle Special Eight) and early motorcar etiquette to modern manifestations (Disneyland’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride). She reveals how William John Cavendish Bentinck-Scott, the peculiar Fifth Duke of Portland, built an extensive network of underground tunnels, thus inspiring the character of Badger, and she puts Grahame’s work in literary context, comparing him to Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, A. A. Milne, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Finally, new to this edition, long buried in the Kenneth Grahame papers, are the notes, letters, and writings by Alastair Grahame and his governess, including several pieces by Kenneth Grahame himself that have never been published before. With a stunning, lyrical tribute to Grahame by Brian Jacques, the internationally best-selling author of the Redwall series, The Annotated Wind in the Willows should prove a most beautiful and enduring tribute to Grahame’s masterpiece. 182 illustrations, color throughout.


Product details:

Item number (ASIN): 0393057747
Author: Kenneth Grahame
Creator: Annie Gauger, Brian Jacques
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8
Edition: annotated edition
ISBN: 0393057747
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Package Dimensions: 170 x 860 x 1010 (hundredths-inches)
Publication Date: April 6, 2009
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Binding: Hardcover

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Rating: - Great background -- flawed annotations
Martin Gardner's classic "Annotated Alice" is indispensable. Annie Auger's "Annotated Wind in the Willows" is a good beginning, but needs serious revision before it attains classic status. The book is beautiful. The photos and samples of classic "Wind in the Willows" illustrators (up to and including Ernest Shepard's "standards") are superb. The background information about Kenneth Grahame, his life and family, and the beginning of "Wind in the Willows" in his own turn-of-the-century life (a banker who became a Governor of the Bank of England, who was happier messing about in boats and rambling over the Downs like a bachlor), and in his bed-time tales and letters for his son Alistair, is outstanding. The prefatory appreciation by Robin Jacques (famous for the talking-animal fantasy adventure series "Redwall") is interesting, but flawed in places. Jacques doesn't know "Wind in the Willows" as well as he might, fascinating though his views are. Many of Annie Auger's annotations are spot on, and will shed light for readers who may not be familiar with Grahame's historical context (England in 1908, or shortly before), the language of the times, and the life of that era, upstairs and downstairs. The exquisite "Englishness" has cried out for sensitive annotation, particularly for modern readers more familiar with TVs, computers, and James Bond, or Harry Potter. You almost have to be a keen Dickensian, a Baker Street afficionado, or far from the madding crowd, or a Janeite, to be able to tune into some of Grahame's language. But sadly some, even many, of Auger's annotations are misleading, and some are just plain wrong. If only it were not so. As an example, the "truncheons" brandished by the (PLOT SPOILER) people pursuing one of our heroes, are NOT "in other words, improvised weapons". They are standard police issue (on both sides of the Atlantic)! Another example: otters and badgers are actually larger members of the weasel, ferret and stoat family -- something that Auger neglects to mention, even if only to say that this zoological fact does not matter much, because Otter and Badger are who they are, and, as characters, simply utterly different from the weasels and stoats and ferrets of the Wild Wood. Similarly, Auger (and Jacques) believes that Rat is a rat (as in black "rattus rattus" or brown "rattus norvegicus"), the kind we don't like. No, no! Grahame makes this absolutely clear: Rat is a WATER RAT -- a totally different species, and not a noxious pest. When annotation details get this wrong, readers are in serious danger. I look for, and am privately developing, necessary revisions to make a NEW REVISED EDITION that will be a CLASSIC. Until then, we can enjoy the good things we have, and be on guard -- a good dictionary, and some common sense is a great help! John Gough -- jugh@deakin.edu.au -- Deakin University, Australia

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Rating: - Anmnotated Wind in the Willows
Any new issue of this book is a treat. I enjoyed the examples of different illustrators, especially Nancy Barnhart's at the end of chapters. For people over seventy, brought up in England, much of the information may not be new, but we are a dying breed and it is necessary and well done. Bravo!. Margaret Blair

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Rating: - Wind in the Willows- Annotated
This is a great book for those of us who like the old time classics that also have such great history attached to it. The book itself has a very good intro to the history of the book, the various printings and the illustrations and the settings etc. Reading the text with the accompanying annotations is a joy so that you fully understand what is going on, interpretations, and historical background. I thought that the combination was terrific.

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Rating: - I disagree with G. Ross
Clearly G Ross didn't read the Foreward enough to understand the cache of research and letters hidden away in libraries in Texas and the UK that provide an entire new context to the work. Well, written, beautiful, a fine piece of scholalry work that as another reviewer said you can enjoy with your kids and an adult an appreciate it on a whole new level.

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Rating: - Avoid this edition!
This book is beautifully designed, but don't let that fool you: unless you're interested in reading, ad nauseam, about how Mole, Rat, Toad, and Badger are racist, classist, heterosexist, imperialist pigs, avoid this book. Far better is the annotated edition from Harvard University Press, by Seth Lerer (The Wind in the Willows: An Annotated Edition). The Norton edition is joyless and depressing.

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