The Guardian's 100 Best Novels Written in English Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899) 33. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900) 34. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901) 35. The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903) 36. The Golden Bowl by Henry James (1904) 37. Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe (1904) 38. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908) 39. The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells (1910) 40. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (1911) 41. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915) 42. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915) 43. The Rainbow by DH Lawrence (1915) 44. Of Human
The Wind in the Willows Elspeth Thomson in 1899, when he was 40; the next year they had their only child, a boy named Alastair (whose nickname was "Mouse") born premature, blind in one eye, and plagued by health problems throughout his life. When Alastair was about four years old, Grahame would tell him bedtime stories, some of which were about a toad, and on his frequent boating holidays without his family he would write further tales of Toad, Mole, Ratty, and Badger in letters to Alastair. In 1908 Grahame took early retirement from his job at the Bank of England and moved with his