Winnie-the-Pooh. With Colour Illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard.

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

Item Number: 142804

London: Methuen Children's Books, 1973.

Signed limited edition of this children’s classic, one of only 300 signed numbered copies signed by illustrator Ernest H. Shepard, this is number 61. Octavo, original publisher’s full morocco with gilt titles to the spine in six compartments within raised bands, gilt vignette of Christopher Robin and Winne the Pooh to the front panel, all edges gilt, cartographic endpapers and color illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard. Signed by Ernest H. Shepard. Fine in a near fine slipcase.

“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).