SOURCE: "Kenneth Grahame and the Literature of Childhood," in English Literature in Transition: 1880-1920, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1977, pp. 3-12.

In the following essay, Ray compares Grahame's The den Age to works about childhood by William Wordsworth and Charles Dickens.

Although Kenneth Grahame's current reputation rests entirely on his classic children's book, The Wind in the Willows, it was the appearance of The Golden Age, a sequence of stories about childhood, some thirteen years earlier in 1985 that made Grahame an immediate literary celebrity. Swinburne called this work "well-nigh too praiseworthy for praise," a judgment ratified by the British public in its enthusiastic response. Today The Golden Age and its sequel in 1898, Dream Days have passed out of print—and out of favor with readers and critics alike. But, in spite of such undeserved oblivion, The Golden Age remains a serious contribution to the body of post-enlightenment literature treating childhood as...