Microsoft Word final-current Developments at the Intersection of British Children-online-version doc

Kenneth Grahame
, (1859-1932), born in Scotland, was a “banker and writer.”
31
The 
Edwardian author initially became famous for his 1895 publication of The Golden Age, 
addressed to adults, yet also read by children. According to Carpenter, the anthropomorphic 
novel The Wind in the Willows (1908) combines children’s innocence and adults’ experience 
whilst remaining “largely accessible to children.”
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Like other children’s fantasies before it, 
The Wind in the Willows
developed from invented stories told by the author to his little son. 
Now a children’s classic, “[it] is one of the most popular and famous children’s fantasies of 
the 20
th
century.” 
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According to Hunt, Grahame’s allegorical work has an ambivalent status. 
Like so many other children’s fantasies, it is a hybrid between two reader levels, that of 
children and that of adults.
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Illustrated by the very personal, sensitively narrated initiation of 
the mole the central, traditional values of The Wind in the Willows are made accessible 
without slipping off into sentimentality. Whereas children learn about initiation, forming 
bonds of friendship, widening the personal horizon, internalising socially accepted behaviour, 
establishing and respecting boundaries, the adults have already made all these experiences and 
can now judge and compare.
28
Clute; Grant, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 680. 
29
Cullinan; Person, The Continuum Encyclopedia, p. 538. 
30
Compare Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer. Klassiker der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur: Ein Internationales 
Lexikon
. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2004, p. 781. 
31
Clute; Grant, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 426. 
32
Carpenter, Secret Gardens, p. 169. 
33
Clute; Grant, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 427. 
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Compare Hunt, An Introduction to Children’s Literature, pp. 96, 99. 

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The Wind in the Willows
had a strong influence on children’s fantasy, especially 
animal stories. Most of Grahame’s followers honour the same values of friendship, warmth, 
security and idyllic cohabitation.
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Later authors rely heavily on Grahame’s pattern, finding it 
exactly the right mixture of components. Conforming to the still prevailing conventions of 
children’s fantasy, the ending, not only of Grahame’s but also of future animal stories, tends 
to be a happy one: Troublemakers either adapt to peaceful cohabitation or have to leave again. 
In most of these animal stories pre-industrial conditions are favoured, casting humans and 
their destructive inventions in a negative light. Animal communities are often depicted in 
idealised medieval settings, for example in The Silver Horn or Redwall, thus reinforcing the 
author’s and reader’s nostalgia of better times. 
The First World War marked a sharp break in children’s fantasy, the Golden Age 
slowly petering out after this shock. As in all times of social and political instability, the 
literary output was inhibited. Yet, thematically, these times favour an escape from an all too 
painful reality. Consequently, during such periods, this kind of fantasy experiences a boom.
In his famous Pooh novels, the British playwright, novelist and poet
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