The House at Pooh Corner

London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1928. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine/very good +. Shepard, Ernest H.. First edition, first printing, duodecimo size, 190 pp. Alan Alexander Milne (1882-1956) will likely ever be remembered for having bequeathed "Winnie the Pooh" to the world. Begun with "When We Were Very Young", a book of poetry first published in 1924, its success set the stage for the Winnie-the-Pooh books, which employed his own son, "Christopher Robin", as a character.

With illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard (1879-1976), an English artist and book illustrator who created drawings for several of the Winnie-the-Pooh books; his gently (truncated) playful illustrations are irrevocably connected to the Pooh books and provide a charming aesthetic to this classic collection of children's stories. As noted author Chris Loker points out in "One Hundred Books Famous in Children's Literature", "Milne was so aware of the extent to which Shepard's drawings contributed to the success of 'Winnie-the-Pooh' that he arranged for him to share in the royalties."

"The House at Pooh Corner" was the second volume of stories with Pooh as the main character, and the one which introduces "Tigger" to the world. Portions of this book have been adapted numerous times to songs and screen, and the book remains an icon of children's literature.

___DESCRIPTION: Bound in full salmon cloth over boards, the front with gilt ruled border, gilt vignette of Christopher Robin with Pooh and Piglet in the center, the spine with gilt ruled borders at the head and tail, gilt lettering, top edge gilt, illustrated endpapers in black on salmon paper of the characters in silhouette dancing across the pages, frontispiece one of the full-page illustrations by Shepard, volume replete with the black-and-white line-drawings of Shepard's, both full page and in-text; duodecimo size (7 1/8" by 5 1/8"), pagination: [i-vi] vii-xi [1, blank] 1-178 [1, silhouette drawing]. The dust jacket of salmon laid paper shows the price of 7/6 net on the spine, vignettes in blue on the front and back panels and spine, front and spine with blue lettering.

___CONDITION: Near fine, with clean boards, the salmon colour bright and unfaded, straight corners without rubbing, a strong, square text block with solid hinges, the interior is clean and bright, and entirely free of prior owner markings; some offsetting to the endpapers from the dust wrapper, a minute chip out of the top two leaves (pp. 1 - 4), and a very small light mark on pp. 92 and 93 (at the fore-edges), else fine. The dust wrapper better than very good, the panels and flaps clean and with only minute edgewear, the spine with sunning and showing more wear at both head and tail, with no loss of text although there are some short closed tears at the head of the spine. Overall a sparkling book in a better than very good jacket.

___CITATIONS: Cutler and Stiles, p. 116; Payne, "Four Children's Books by A.A. Milne" ("Studies in Bibliography" Volume Twenty-Three, 1970), no. IV A.

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