The Four Pooh Books: When We Were Very Young; Winnie-The-Pooh; Now We Are Six; The House At Pooh Corner.

MILNE, A.A.; Illustrated by Ernest Shepard.

Item Number: 139773

London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1924-1928.

First editions of each work in Milne’s wonderful Pooh quartet, with only When We Were Very Young being a second issue. Octavo, four volumes, original publisher’s gilt-decorated pictorial cloth, top edge gilt, pictorial endpapers, illustrated with decorations by Ernest Shepard. When We Were Very Young is a second issue with numbered contents page, neat pencil ownership inscription and light browning on front free endpaper, jacket with light toning to spine. Winnie-The-Pooh, cartographic endpapers, jacket evenly browned with chipping to extremities, tear to lower spine joints and across spine affecting image, small tear to lower panel lower edge. Now We Are Six, pictorial endpapers with small ink ownership inscription, light toning to half-title, rear endpapers browned, cloth spine faded, jacket with small portions of loss to edges of lower panel. The House at Pooh Corner, pictorial endpapers, a few spots to half-title, cloth very lightly faded. Each volume is very good to near fine in a very good dust jacket. An attractive set of Milne’s classic series, rare and desirable in the original dust jackets.

“Although Alan Alexander Milne wrote novels, short stories, poetry and many plays for adults, in addition to his work as assistant editor for Punch from 1906 to 1914, it is his writings for children that have captured the hearts of millions of people worldwide and granted Milne everlasting fame” (Silvey, 461). Milne wrote most of these poems at the request of friend and fellow poet Rose Fyleman, who was planning a new children’s magazine. “On a rain-blighted holiday in Wales, [Milne] escaped from the crowd of fellow guests to the summerhouse, and for 11 days wrote a set of children’s verses, one each day… ‘There on the other side of the lawn was a child with whom I had lived for three years [his son, Christopher Robin]… and here within me were unforgettable memories of my own childhood.’ He added more verses when he got home, enough for a book, and allowed some to be published in advance in Punch” (Carpenter & Prichard, 351). Shepard, a Punch staff artist at the time, provided delightful line vignettes, resulting in “a wonderful marriage of verse and vision. His delicately precise and fresh drawings had an instant appeal” (DNB).