Kenneth Grahame 
Pagan Papers (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) 

This 1893 collection of eighteen pieces is Grahame’s first book.  Rather than fantasies, it contains genial, rambling essays on such subjects as ‘The Romance of the Road, ‘ ‘The Rural Pan, ‘ ‘The White Poppy, ‘ ‘The Fairy Wicket, ‘ and ‘The Lost Centaur.’  Some of the essays prefigure his fictions, especially his masterpiece,
The Wind in the Willows.

About the author

Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) was a Scottish writer of fantasies for children and adults. He also worked a daytime job as a banker until retiring in 1908, the same year he published his most famous work, The Wind in the Willows—in which Mr. Toad is modeled after Grahame’s son, whose tragic death at twenty darkened the author’s later years.