The Wind in the Willows

By Kenneth Grahame

First edition with Shepard’s illustrations, first impression: London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1931.

Original green cloth. The upper board is blocked in gilt with Shepard’s vignette of Toad, Mole and Rat, and the spine is lettered in gilt; top edge stained green. Shepard’s map of the river bank and the Wild Wood is printed on the front endpapers, with his drawings throughout the text. In the original dust jacket, priced 7/6 net on the spine. The front panel carries Shepard’s drawing of the caravan and the rear panel his drawing of reeds. The front flap describes the artist as “Mr. A. A. Milne’s ally in the Christopher Robin books”, and the rear flap advertises Milne’s Toad of Toad Hall.

A very good copy, with a small previous owner’s name to the head of the front pastedown and a bookseller’s ticket to the lower corner of the rear pastedown. Light spotting to the fore-edge and a light wrinkle to the upper inner margins of the contents page and opening text leaf; the contents otherwise fresh and clean.

The dust jacket is very good, browned, particularly to the spine panel, which also bears an area of staining. There are some chips to the edges, chiefly at the head of the spine and a tiny nick to the bottom edge of upper panel.

Grahame’s novel of Mole, Rat, Badger and Toad sets the comedy of Toad’s misadventures against quieter chapters on friendship, home and the turning seasons of the river bank. It was first published by Methuen in 1908, with only a frontispiece by Graham Robertson. By 1931 it had run to thirty-seven editions, among them versions illustrated by Paul Bransom, Nancy Barnhart and Wyndham Payne, as the list on the verso of the title records. Methuen turned to Shepard after his drawings for Milne’s Christopher Robin books. Shepard visited Grahame, then in his seventies, at Pangbourne. There the author described the river and the Wild Wood to him and asked him to be kind to the animals, and Shepard sketched the riverside before beginning the drawings. Grahame died in July 1932. A large-paper issue of 200 copies, signed by Grahame and Shepard, was published in the same year as this trade edition.