Kenneth Grahame Society

Discussion Forum

A discussion forum, with various sections on the life and works of Kenneth Grahame. Members can use it to post messages and participate in discussions. While registration is required, in order to become a member and use the forum, membership is free and people from all over the world are welcome to join.

There are two common challenges for small, specialist literary societies and discussion forums which the Kenneth Grahame Society hopes to avoid. Firstly, the traditional literary society, which meets several times in the year, can only serve a local membership. The contributions of leading authorities and enthusiasts who live elsewhere in the country, or even abroad, are not available. Secondly, the small, specialist online forum can suffer from lack of live discussion. A member posts a message and finds that it takes several days before a response appears. This can eventually dampen members' enthusiasm.

To address these challenges, the society encourages two modes of usage of the forum:

1. The standard mode/forums where anyone can open a thread or post a response at any time.

2. The meeting mode/forum for organized online meetings at regular intervals. The meeting section is separate from the standard sections. The meetings will be scheduled to run on a weekend. On the Friday the agenda will be published and the meeting will open. The agenda will consist of 3-5 topics (threads) proposed by the society, 0-3 topics (threads) proposed by members and 1 AOB thread. Over the weekend members make an effort to log on 2-3 times and participate in the discussions. The meeting formally closes on the following Monday evening.

Eight meetings per year are scheduled initially. The first will be held from Friday 31st August until Monday 3rd September 2007* - some time hence to allow membership levels to accumulate. The provisional society agenda for the first meeting will be:

- Toad as an “Anti Hero” in The Wind in the Willows

- Illustration v Decoration in Children's Books

- Home Descriptions in The Wind in the Willows

- Multi-Level Writing in The Wind in the Willows

- The Humour in The Wind in the Willows

This agenda may change if the topics receive extensive discussion on the forum prior to the meeting.

(* Postponed until late 2007 to allow membership to grow to the necessary levels.)