The Wind in the Willows has turned 100!!!!!

That's a good one, Wandel, i like that . . .

My favorite illustrated version of WITW was not the original, but rather the 20th century edition by Michael Hague. Hague's vision of Badger's House & Mole's End became my idea of what a home should look like and has seriously influenced my taste to this day.
( I grew up in a sprawling suburban Bauhaus style home with Finn Juhl furniture, never my idea of cozy .)

I suspect the illustrations we first see in a beloved book become the only ones we can ever like.

I find the Disney and everyone else since the original illustrators of the classic books stomach churning......unless I grew up with the newer version.

Hague has an old fashioned charm to his work. I wish I could have found some examples on the web other than the cover. Hague was not my first introduction to the story, but I've come to like his version best.

I agree that in most cases there is often something special about the original illustrations to a classic. Winnie the Pooh comes to mind. The Disney version makes me think of Saturday morning cartoons and plastic toys instead of good literature for children.

I think that all of the illustrators used watercolor and engraving as media. A departure from that Art neuveau/Arts n Crafts style was Arthur Rachlans more solid figures . Ealriest 20th century printing still had relied on engraving and color engraving. The earliest WITW version was maybe in the first decade of the 20th, Rachlan was putting the touches onto his illustrations in 1938. Ill bet there are over 50 different illustrators in the various versions Of WITW, some of them as recent as 2007.
I think that even Murray Tinkleman did a version of the illustrations.

Uhm . . . do you mean Arthur Rackham? I searched for Arthur Rachlan, but didn't find anything.

A recent BBC programme revealed that the Fowey river in Cornwall, a familiar holiday location for me, was a major inspiration for Graham who regularly "escaped" there from his wife and son. His attempts at compensatory letters home to the boy contained the original story in episodes. Interestingly Daphne Du Maurier established herself in a cottage just across the river at Fowey. My thoughts about the place now seem to be permeated by a combination of the darker aspects of Du Maurier's plots and Graham's difficult marriage. Gone is the gentle quintessence suggested by the story alone.

I'm not such a purist about the illustrations, re Wind in the Willows. I have not seen any I didn't fall in love with. Conversely, the Disney Winnie the Pooh is a perversion of Milne's work, and I don't consider them to be the same characters at all.

Oh dear!!!!



Perhaps you can divest yourself of this?


I have always found WiTW quite melancholy, and oddly absent families and children (only Otter and the Field Mice seem to have such)....I'd always sort of imagined it as an Edwardian undergrad or don fantasy...but the news of the marriage perhaps explains it more.

Perversion indeed!


Ptooey.

You will find that EH Shepherd did the 'pitchers' - of the two, he had the more interesting life.

He was the illustrator for both 'Wind in the Willows' AND the original 'Winnie the Pooh'. His other claims to fame are marrying a much older woman (Florence Eleanor Chaplin) and hanging around with the Pre-Raphaelites. There are two autobiographies, 'Drawn from Memory' and 'Drawn from Life'.

His daughter illustrated 'Mary Poppins'.

OOPS . YEs I meant Racham , I cant even blame that on my usual bad spelling. Its more my advancing age memory changing my recollection.

There is a site that has for sale, art produced by old English illustrators and some Americans. The origfinals for many of these can go for princely sums. Even cartoon cells (which hardly have a life at all)

He (EH Shepherd) also spent a lot of time stuffing an older woman. Did I mention that? They are SO grateful! And they'll go like the privy door in a cyclone -- all night long. Lucky bastard! No wonder none of the illustrations for WITW or WtP weren't coloured in - didn't have the strength to hold a brush. WooooooooooOOOOOHHHH, laddie!