C A L I F O R N I A A N T I Q U A R I A N B O O K F A I R 2 0 2 6
1. The autograph manuscript of Milne’s introduction to Now We Are Six . Three single page of closely written text (approx. 400 words) made up of three sections pasted together. 2. The autograph manuscript of the dedication page. One page of headed notepaper, written in pencil. 3. Two manuscript poems included in Now We Are Six . Wind on the Hill, which appears on p.93/94, five four line stanzas on a page of headed letter paper. ‘A Thought’, which appears on p.69, a single four line stanza in pencil on notepaper, headed Now We Are Six, with paper-clip mark to upper edge. 4. Two very short autograph letters, signed with initials, to Frederick Muller. One on Mallord Street note paper (undated but stamped received 25 March 1927) confirming the poem King Hillary should be included in the book. The other (also undated, received 5 May 1927) on Cotchford Farm note paper, simply stating that Milne was back in London again to meet. 5. Author’s original typescripts for ten of the poems included in Now We Are Six , with a number of autograph annotations throughout. 6. A single page of Milne’s autograph instructions for the order - ing of the poems. Rather than a definitive list, Milne gives those poems to come at the beginning part and those to come in the later part and further poems which should be placed together and those which should be well separated. $100,000 The remaining manuscripts from the formation of Milne’s third Winnie the Pooh book, Now We Are Six, from the collection of Milne’s pub - lisher. Following the exceptional success of When We Were Very Young, Milne continued to write children’s verse, even as he was writing Win - nie The Pooh. The poems Dinker, Busy and The Little Black Hen, had already made their first appearances in Pears’ Annual in late 1924 when Milne wrote to his agent, Curtis Brown, in April 1925 to say “I am pre - pared to do more verses of the When We Were Very Young kind for serial use in the next year...” The disparate genesis of the poems that would eventually make up Now We Are Six, meant that when the time came to publish the col- lection, much of the creative work had already been done and it was a question of drawing together the already published poems and order-
ing them. Some additional material needed to be found, Muller wrote to Milne in July 1927 to say that the 24 poems they had “the book will not make so many pages as we were originally reckoning on”. So a further eleven poems were found or created to form the final 35 poems of the book, in time for publication in October that year. Milne alludes to this extended gestation in his introduction, “We have been nearly three years writing this book. We began when we were very young... and now we are six. So, of course, bits of it seem rather baby-ish to us... and when we read it to ourselves just now we said, “Well, well, well,” and turned over very quickly.” The introduction finishes with a whimsical p.s., to remind readers of
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