When We Were Very Young. by MILNE, A. A - 1924

London: Methuen & Co.,, 1924. Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, gilt vignettes to the covers, illustrated endpapers, top edge gilt. With the dust jacket. Illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard. Spine gently rolled and lightly toned, minor rubbing to extremities, faint offsetting to endpapers, a very good, bright copy in the jacket with browned spine, small chip to head of spine, minor loss to foot of spine, closed tear from head of spine to edge of front flap, another to head of front panel, tape repair to verso. Fourth edition, first impression. Presentation copy, inscribed by the illustrator on the half-title, "Aunt Fanny, with love from Ernest, Christmas 1924". Shepard was very close to his aunts; his mother died when he was ten, after which his aunts helped to raise him, taking him and his siblings on many trips. Shepard described Fanny as "the energetic one" and "chief organiser" of the family in his autobiography Drawn From Memory (1957), recalling fondly a story of her visit to the Jubilee illuminations, "in spite of Aunt Alicia's protests and warnings". This copy has been in the family by descent since the presentation. With a publisher's advertisement for Fourteen Songs from When We Were Very Young, a collection of Milne's verses set to music by H. Fraser-Simson, laid-in. When We Were Very Young is the first of the four Pooh books. It was first published in London on 6 November 1924 to immense acclaim; by the end of the year they had released this fourth edition and more than 53,000 copies had been printed of what The Times called "the greatest children's book since Alice" (Thwaite p. 286).