Scottish novelist and short story writer Kenneth Grahame was born on March 8, 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His best known works include The Wind in the Willows (1908), one of the classics of children's literature and The Reluctant Dragon (1898); both books were later adapted into Disney films. While still a young man in his 20s, Grahame began to publish short stories in London magazines. Some of these stories were collected and published as Pagan Papers in 1893, and, two years later as, The Golden Age. These were followed by Dream Days in 1898, which contains The Reluctant Dragon. There is a ten-year gap between Grahame's earlier works and his greatest novel The Wind in the Willows. During this decade, Grahame became a father. The wayward headstrong nature he saw in his little son Alastair (also known as "Mouse") he transformed into the swaggering Mr. Toad, one of its four principal characters. Despite its success, he never attempted a sequel. Kenneth Grahame died in on July 6, 1932 in Pangbourne, Berkshire. He was buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford. Grahame's cousin Anthony Hope, also a successful author, wrote his epitaph, which reads: "To the beautiful memory of Kenneth Grahame, husband of Elspeth and father of Alastair, who passed the river on the 6th of July, 1932, leaving childhood and literature through him the more blest for all time.”
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