Dream Days

Kenneth Grahame

Apr 2021 · Good Press

About this ebook

Kenneth Grahame's "Dream Days" is a collection of children's fiction and childhood reminiscences. Dream Days was first published in 1898 under the imprint John Lane: The Bodley Head as a sequel to the 1895 collection The Golden Age (some of its selections feature the same family of five children). The first six selections in the book had previously appeared in periodical publications such as The Yellow Book and the New Review in the United Kingdom, and Scribner's Magazine in the United States. The classic story "The Reluctant Dragon" by Grahame is included in the book. The book contains the following stories: The Twenty-first of October Dies Irae Mutabile Semper The Magic Ring Its Walls Were as of Jasper A Saga of the Seas The Reluctant Dragon A Departure

About the author

Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh on March 3, 1859. When he was five years old, his mother died of scarlet fever and he nearly died himself, of the same disease. His father became an alcoholic and sent the children to Berkshire to live with relatives. They were later reunited with their father, but after a failed year, the children never heard from him again. Sometime later, one of his brothers died at the age of fifteen. He attended St. Edward's School as a child and intended to go on to Oxford University, but his relatives wanted him to go into banking. He worked in his uncle's office, in Westminster, for two years then went to work at the Bank of England as a clerk in 1879. He spent nearly thirty years there and became the Secretary of the Bank at the age of thirty-nine. He retired from the bank right before The Wind in the Willows was published in 1908. He wrote essays on topics that included smoking, walking and idleness. Many of the essays were published as the book Pagan Papers (1893) and the five orphan characters featured in the papers were developed into the books The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898). The Wind in the Willows (1908) was based on bedtime stories and letters to his son and it is where the characters Rat, Badger, Mole and Toad were created. In 1930, Milne's stage version was brought to another audience in Toad of Toad Hall. Grahame died on July 6, 1932.