"A LITTLE BOY AND HIS BEAR WILL ALWAYS BE PLAYING": LIMITED AMERICAN EDITION OF THE HOUSE AT POOH CORNER, SIGNED BY BOTH MILNE AND SHEPARD

MILNE, A. A. The House at Pooh Corner. New York: E.P. Dutton, (1928). Quarto, original half green cloth with yellow pictorial paper boards, uncut and partially unopened, original glassine dust jacket. Housed in original cardboard box and in a custom clamshell box. $8800.

Signed limited large-paper copy of the first American edition, number 5 of 250 copies signed by both Milne and illustrator Ernest Shepard. A beautiful copy, uncut and unopened, in the scarce original glassine and publisher's illustrated box.

"Even as Milne celebrates childhood" in this, the final book of his Pooh quartet, "he subtly prepares both characters and readers for the inevitable need to forge ahead" (Silvey, 462). The stories in this volume—the de- and reconstruction of Eeyore's house, Tigger's arrival in the Forest, Christopher Robin's attempted farewell in an Enchanted Place—bring to a close tales that are "more successful as works written for children than anything else produced during children's literature's Golden Age" (Carpenter, 205). This edition, preceded only by the English edition of the same year, is signed by Milne and by Shepard, whose delightful line vignettes "add so much to the [Pooh] books that most people consider them to be inseparable from the texts" (Silvey, 462). Published the same year as the first edition. Cutler & Stiles, 116.

Book and wrapper exceptionally fine. Small chip to one corner of scarce box only. An extremely desirable double-signed copy.