Best edition of The Wind in the Willows?

October 24, 2014 10:09 PM

I want to buy a nice copy of The Wind in the Willows as a gift. I went to AbeBooks, and there's about a million editions, and most of them don't have extensive pictures of the guts.

Old is good, and the more (good) illustrations the better. Wikipedia claims the Shepard illustrations are the most popular, but, for instance, here's a 1971 edition with "12 full page coloured [Shepard] illustrations, 1 double page, and numerous coloured illustrations in the text", and here's a 1959 edition with "8 fine colour plates by E. H. Shepard and b/w illustrations throughout". Alternately, this modern edition on Amazon seems pretty popular. Any recommendations?

posted by erikgrande to Shopping (11 answers total)

The very recent edition illustrated by Inga Moore was wildly popular a few years back, but it looks like some folks were pretty upset by the abridgement. Her version is supposed to have almost 100 illustrations, though, so it's pretty lush.
posted by redsparkler at 11:37 PM on October 24, 2014

I have the version with the Michael Hague illustrations. It is completely gorgeous, but, but you'd probably have to buy it second hand.
posted by girlgenius at 11:40 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

I also have a version with Michael Hague illustrations - mine is the 1984 Book Club Associations edition. It has 70 illustrations which are mixed in as in-line small pictures, half page pictures, whole page pictures, double page spread of pictures.

They are gorgeous and I used to spend a lot of time pouring over the detail as a youngster.
posted by AnnaRat at 1:14 AM on October 25, 2014

Best answer: I can't vouch for this edition personally, and it might not be quite what you're looking for, but The Folio Society makes some of the most beautiful books out there. The link has some photos of the illustrations.
posted by cellar door at 4:40 AM on October 25, 2014

Best answer: I have this edition, available on Amazon: The Wind in the Willows. Just about every page has an illustration, and the pages for each chapter are full two-page illustrations. It's absolutely beautiful.

A note - the "More Inside" at Amazon shows illustrations from a different version of the book, for reasons known only to Amazon..
posted by ralan at 6:22 AM on October 25, 2014

Look on Abe Books for the 1940 Heritage Press edition. It has illustrations by Arthur Rackham including several color plates that are gorgeous. My dad had this book and I remember loving to look at the pictures before I could read even...
posted by Otter_Handler at 6:24 AM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

2nding the Rackham illustrations. They are classic, beautiful.
posted by drhydro at 8:38 AM on October 25, 2014

Make sure you get an edition which includes the chapters "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and "Wayfarers All", if this is important to you.... many editions leave these out and don't say "abridged".
posted by The otter lady at 9:07 AM on October 25, 2014

How can there be abridged versions of this book? It's not THAT long - and those are two of the best chapters!!!!
posted by scolbath at 9:45 AM on October 25, 2014

We have many versions of this book at Open Library that can be viewed through the BookReader if you wan tot go that route. You can sign up for a (free) account and just click "read online' and page through it and see what you think. I sort of like this edition (older ones are viewable without logging in) but the Folio Society probably has the best edition though I'm partial to the original version even though it's not quite as lush.
posted by jessamyn at 10:31 AM on October 25, 2014

Response by poster: Thanks for all the replies. Returning stuff to Amazon is easy enough that I'm going to try the Ingpen version, keep the Folio in mind as backup.
posted by erikgrande at 8:18 AM on October 26, 2014