Kenneth Grahame Society

Illustrators

When The Wind in the Willows was originally published it had a frontispiece illustration by Graham Robertson but no other illustrations. Some years later various illustrated editions appeared. It is interesting to note how the various artists addressed the challenges of depicting anthropomorphised animals, the relative sizes of the animals and the humans and, not least, how to draw Pan. Their illustrations also represent a variety of interpretations of the book.

The illustrated editions are listed in five groupings below. The first group covers the editions from 1908-1982. The book was still under copyright in this period - until October 1983, in fact - and any illustrated version needed to be officially commissioned or approved by the copyright holders. The second group covers full-text versions from the period from 1983 up until the present day. The third group covers abridged editions editions from the same period. The fourth group covers picture book editions, also from the same period. Picture book editions are considered to be those versions which are extensively abridged to suit very young readers, and in most cases they may have as much, or more, space devoted to illustrations as to text. The fifth group covers adapted-text editions - for example, comic book and poetic adaptations.

Each link below opens a webpage summarising the corresponding artist's edition of the book. A few low-resolution images of the illustrations are also included, to demonstrate the style and interpretation of each artist.

1. Illustrated Editions from 1908-1982

- 1913 Paul Bransom

- 1922 Nancy Barnhart

- 1927 Wyndham Payne

- 1931 Ernest Shepard

- 1940 Arthur Rackham

- 1946 Paul Henning

- 1966 Roberta Carter Clark

- 1966 Dick Cuffari

- 1966 Tasha Tudor

- 1968 David Stone

- 1969 Alex Tsao