Kenneth Grahame Biography

The Wind in the Willows About the Author

Kenneth Grahame was born March 8, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland, to Cunningham and Bessie Ingles Grahame. When he was four, the Grahame family moved to a new home in the country. Grahame's happiness in his new surroundings was short-lived; the following year his mother died of scarlet fever several weeks after giving birth to his brother, Harold. The four Grahame children went to live with their maternal grandmother at her home on the banks of the Thames River near the village of Cookham Dene. Kenneth was deeply affected by the loss of his mother and the absence of his father, who frequently left the children for long periods of time. By the time he was seven, his father went to France and abandoned his family for good.

Although Grahame, who had always been a good student, had high hopes of studying at Oxford, his tight-fisted uncles took him...
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