Books

First edition, first impression, of Milne's first collection of stories featuring the famous bear. The dust jacket is present in the first state ("117th Thousand" on rear flap). After the huge success of When We Were Very Young in 1924, Milne was asked to contribute a story to the London Evening News. "The Wrong Sort of Bees", published on Christmas Eve 1925, was based on a bedtime story that Milne had told his son Christopher. It starred Christopher's teddy bear, bought at Harrods for Christopher's first birthday, known initially as Edward or Edward Bear, and later renamed Winnie-the-Pooh (after a favourite bear cub at London zoo). Winnie-the-Pooh was an immediate success and garnered even more enthusiastic reviews than its predecessor, one critic writing that "When the real Christopher Robin is a little old man, children will find him waiting for them. It is the child's book of the season that seems certain to stay" (Thwaite, p. 317). Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, front cover with vignette and ruled border in gilt, yellow map endpapers, top edge gilt. With dust jacket. Illustrated throughout by E. H. Shepard. Cloth and gilt bright, slight lean to spine, ends and corners a little rubbed, endpapers toned; jacket toned, ends and corners chipped, head of spine repaired at verso: a very nice copy in good jacket, price integral to spine. John R. Payne, "Four Children's Books by A. A. Milne", Studies in Bibliography, University of Virginia Press, vol. 23, 1970, pp. 127-139, item IIA; Ann Thwaite, A. A. Milne: His Life, 1990.

Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear, is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A.A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book 'Winnie-the-Pooh' (1926), and this was followed by 'The House at Pooh Corner' (1928). Milne also included a poem about the bear in the children's verse book 'When We Were Very Young' (1924) and many more in 'Now We Are Six' (1927). All four volumes were illustrated by E.H. Shepard.