E.H. Shepard and A.A. Milne | Suite of six lithographs from When We Were Very Young, [1925]

E.H. Shepard and A.A. Milne

"Six Drawings by E.H. Shepard, Illustrating Poems from When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne". London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, [1925]

Six lithograph proofs, each signed by the author and illustrator in pencil, each marked in pencil "Proof", titles comprising:

i) "Teddy Bear" (45.5 x 33.2cm);

ii) "The King's Breakfast" (50.8 x 39.8cm), faint horizontal mark through middle;

iii) "Lines and Squares" (35.7 x 27cm), slight creasing at top edge;

iv) "Vespers" (35.2 x 22.5cm);

v) "Hoppity" (32 x 25.3cm);

vi) "Happiness" (37 x 22.8cm), creased at top left corner; slightly browned;

mounted on cardboard, housed in original cardboard portfolio with publisher's labels, portfolio soiled and rubbed at edges

The six best loved and most enduring of all the verses published in When We Were Very Young in 1924. These broadsides were probably published between 1924 and 1925, when there was an exhibition of Shepard's drawings from the book. Two illustrations for "Lines and Squares" appeared in Punch and also on this broadside but not in the published book version, due to lack of space: the bear wearing a napkin and with a fat stomach, having just eaten a man.

PROVENANCE:

Bought from Alwin J. Scheuer (d. 1934), prominent rare book dealer in New York; by descent from the family of Henry Herrman