Winnie-the-Pooh. With Decorations by Ernest H. Shepard.

MILNE, A.A.; Decorations by Ernest H. Shephard.

Item Number: 129396

London: Methuen and Co, 1926.

First edition of this children’s classic. Octavo, gilt titles to the spine, elaborately decorated in gilt, top edge gilt, cartographic endpapers and line drawings by Ernest H. Shepard. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. A nice example.

“Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh has been considered a classic of children’s literature almost since its publication” (Cooper & Cooper). In 1925, A.A. Milne purchased “a Sussex farmhouse for use as a weekend and holiday alternative to the family’s London home… [that would] provide the setting for the stories he now started to write about [his son] Christopher’s toys… Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner [its companion volume, published 1928] are, on their own terms, more successful as works written for children than anything else produced during children’s literature’s Golden Age” (Carpenter). “Ernest H. Shepard’s illustrations, modeled after the actual toys, show character and movement in simple line vignettes, which add so much to the books that most people consider them to be inseparable from the texts” (Silvey).