Pooh makes an appearance in one of the poems, “Us Two.”įrom the first edition of Now We Are Six (London: Methuen & co., 1927) Winnie-the-Pooh was indeed wildly popular, and Milne followed it in 1927 with another book of verse, Now We Are Six. The illustrations for Pooh, however, were actually based on a teddy bear named Growler, which belonged to Shepard’s son Graham. The originals are still on view at the New York Public Library. Milne later confirmed that all of the animals except for Rabbit and Owl were based on actual toys. The foibles of Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends Piglet, Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit, and Kanga and Roo were told with wry humor that captivated readers young and old. The first American edition included 200 signed and numbered large-paper copies, of which Wake Forest’s is number 137. Milne’s publishers this time anticipated the demand for his book, and they ordered two sets of electrotype plates from which to print. Title page from first American edition (New York: E.P. Two years later Milne brought out a volume of stories about Winnie-the-Pooh and other stuffed animals from the collection of his young son, Christopher Robin.

He later wrote that he sought to strike a balance between conveying the “artless beauty… innocent grace… unstudied abandon of movement” of young children while also recognizing their “lack of moral quality, which expresses itself…in an egotism entirely ruthless”. When We Were Very Young is not the work of a poet becoming playful, nor of a lover of children expressing his love, nor of a prose-writer knocking together a few jingles for the little ones, it is the work of a light-verse writer taking his job seriously even though he is taking it into the nursery.Īlthough his English-nursery parlance can strike modern readers as a bit twee, Milne’s depiction of childhood is not sentimental. The practice of no form of writing demands such a height of technical perfection as the writing of light verse. Milne took his craft seriously, observing that The bear who would become famous as Winnie-the-Pooh made his first appearance (as Edward Bear) in the poem “Teddy Bear.”

Note from dust jacket flap, first edition

The publishers reprinted the book four times in November and December of 1924. But When We Were Very Young was an immediate bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic.

When he announced to his editors (at Methuen in London and Dutton in New York) that his next manuscript was a book of children’s poems, they were skeptical. A former editor at Punch magazine, Milne was by 1924 a successful playwright and author of several volumes of essays and poetry for adults. Alan Alexander Milne (1882-1956) never intended to be a children’s author.

1928 winnie the pooh first edition