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

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

Item Number: 119845

New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1926.

Signed limited first edition of this classic work, one of 200 copies of the large paper edition. Octavo, original half cloth, folding map at rear. lllustrated by Ernest H. Shepard. Signed by both A.A. Milne and Ernest H. Shepard. Additionally signed again by Ernest Shepard on the title page. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with light rubbing. An exceptional 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).