Another fan was AA Milne, who adapted it into the play Toad of Toad Hall, and wrote in an introduction to an edition of the novel that 'one does not argue about The Wind in the Willows'. Roosevelt eventually persuaded US publisher Scribner to take it on. Theodore Roosevelt, then US president, wrote to Grahame in 1909 to tell him that he had 'read it and reread it, and have come to accept the characters as old friends'. Its staunchest advocate was, however, an important one. One very literal review, in TP's Weekly, said it would 'win no credence from the best authorities on biology' writing for The Bookman, Arthur Ransome called it 'a failure, like a speech to Hottentots made in Chinese'. Methuen eventually agreed to publish the book but paid Grahame (who worked in banking) no advance, and the book was met initially with critical disdain. ''Here today - in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped - always somebody else's horizon! Oh bliss! Oh poop-poop! Oh my! Oh my!''īy Christmas 1907 the book was finished, and Grahame sent it to publishers in the UK and the US who both turned it down. 'We can see in this possibly the source of Toad's fascination with motor cars,' writes David Stuart Davies in an afterword to the Collector's Library edition of the novel. The arrogant but lovable character of Mr Toad is said to have been partially inspired by Alistair, an adventurous boy who would escape from home when young and lie in the road waiting to be run over by a car. Grahame began The Wind in the Willows as a bedtime story for his son Alistair, continuing it in letters written to him while staying at Fowey.

Wind in the willows first edition