Does The Wind in the Willows <\i>need an annotated edition?
Suggesting that Grahame's prose, "encrusted with the patina of age
and affect," has become an obstacle to full appreciation of the
work, Lerer offers the text with running disquisitions in the
margins on now-archaic words and phrases, Edwardian social mores
and a rich array of literary references from Aesop to Gilbert and
Sullivan. Occasionally he goes over the top - making, for instance,
frequent references alongside Toad's supposed mental breakdown to
passages from Kraft-Ebing's writings on clinical insanity - and, as
in his controversial Children's Literature, a Reader's History from
Aesop to Harry Potter <\i>(2008), displays a narcissistic
streak: "This new edition brings The Wind in the
Willows<\i>...into the ambit of contemporary scholarship and
criticism on children's literature..." Still, the commentary will
make enlightening reading for parents or other adults who think
that there's nothing in the story for them - and a closing essay on
(among other topics) the links between Ernest Shepard's art for
this and for Winnie the Pooh <\i>makes an intriguing
lagniappe. (selective resource list) (Literary analysis.
Adult/professional) <\i> (Kirkus Reviews)
This classic of the English countryside, . first published in 1908,
is a favourite with readers of all ages. As the late Margery Fisher
wrote, 'Adults are sadly aware of the figure of Grahame himself,
languishing in a city office and longing for the river: children
respond to the fun, the anarchy of Toad and the entrancing detail
as Grahame's son Alastair must have done when he listened to the
bedside stories that became a book. ' The author invited Arthur
Rackham to illustrate his book, but Rackham said he was too busy -
a decision he was happily able to reconsider in 1936 when he was
approached by the American publisher of the Limited Editions Club.
The project, which he carried out with love and great care for the
authenticity of detail, was his last: the drawings appeared first
in the USA in 1939 and in Britian in 1950.
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