Literary Appearances
A water vole named Ratty is a leading character in the 1908 children's book Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame: the locality used in the book is believed to be Moor Copse in Berkshire, England, and the character's name "Ratty" has become widely associated with the species and their riverbank habitat, as well as the misconception that they are a species of rat.
In the comic novel and film Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, one of the characters, Urk, refers to the subject of his unrequited love, Elfine Starkadder, as his little water vole. Throughout the story, Urk spends a lot of time talking to the water voles on the farm.
C. S. Calverley a 19th Century writer of (among other things) light verse, in his poem "Shelter," beginning:
By the wide lake's margin I mark'd her lie--
The wide, weird lake where the alders sigh--
Tells of an apparently shy, easily frightened young female by a lakeside, who in the last line of the poem, it's revealed that:
For she was a water-rat.
Read more about this topic: European Water Vole
Famous quotes containing the words literary and/or appearances:
“The literary wiseacres prognosticate in many languages, as they have throughout so many centuries, setting the stage for new haut monde in letters and making up the public’s mind.”
—Fannie Hurst (1889–1968)
“We often think ourselves inconsistent creatures, when we are the furthest from it, and all the variety of shapes and contradictory appearances we put on, are in truth but so many different attempts to gratify the same governing appetite.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)