Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932), author, spent much of his childhood in the care of his grandmother and uncle after the death of his mother in 1864. He attended St Edward's School in Oxford, but was denied the opportunity to attend the University there due to his uncle's refusal to fund further study. Instead, Grahame pursued a career in the Bank of England, ultimately becoming its secretary in 1898. Writing remained an amateur hobby, though his first piece ('By a Northern Furrow') was published in 1888 in the St James's Gazette. This was followed by a series of short stories about childhood, which formed the basis of his 1895 book The Golden Age. These works gained Grahame an international audience, including Theodore Roosevelt, even before the writing of his most famous work, The Wind in the Willows (1908), which was contemporaneously difficult to get published. The short story Bertie's Escapade preceded this work, in 1907, and uses a similar style in featuring animals as the protagonists.

Grahame married Elspeth Thomson in July 1899, and they had one son, Alastair, in May 1900.

Further details are given in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.