One hundred years ago, in early 1908, Kenneth Grahame first put the manuscript for Wind in the Willows in an envelope and sent it out. Apparently it took several rejections and the intervention of Teddy Roosevelt to get the well-loved novel published that October. (I think any novelist today would think that under a year is nothing to complain about, but I guess Grahame was already published and this constituted a surprising delay.) A.A. Milne later adapted the book to the stage, which helped spur its success.
Wind in the Willows is one of those books I remember fondly, without remembering the plot very well. Moles, rats, toads, boats, loud cars. . . I'm sure it would be familiar since I read it over many times, but I'm not entirely sure I want to see the story with adult eyes. After all, according to Wikipedia, the 1981 "sequel" Wild Wood, which I read and didn't like when I was nine, was really a political retelling of the original story from the point of view of the working class inhabitants of the neighboring wood. No wonder I felt like I was missing something.
Still, if I were over in Henley on Thames, I would totally be at the festival where Wind in the Willows is being celebrated today.
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