FIRST BOOK INSCRIBED TO HIS AMERICAN PUBLISHER
Lovers in London.
London: Alston Rivers, Arundel Street, W.C, 1905.
Price: $4,000.00
About the item
First edition of Milne's very rare first book. vi, 7-125, [3]pp. 8vo (7 1/8 x 5 1/8 in.; 181 x 131 mm). FIRST BOOK INSCRIBED TO HIS AMERICAN PUBLISHER. Publisher's green cloth lettered in red; With original spine laid down, slightly rubbed. Laid into a green cloth slipcase. Haring-Smith, A1.
Item #317514
With a lengthy humorous inscription to his American publisher on the front free endpaper. At the request of Elliott Macrae (1901-1968), who published Milne's Pooh books in the United States, Milne inscribed and signed this book on 3 March 1933, addressing Macrae, as his friends did, as Jimmy (actually Jimmie): "My dear Jimmy-Some facts about this book may be of interest to you. I wrote it when I was three, entirely with the left hand. A Mr. Alston Rivers, who had borrowed my father's bicycle pump, and lost it, hearing that every other publisher had (quite rightly) refused the book, arranged to discharge the debt by putting it on the market. He printed 100 copies: sold one (to my father—who was down about 7/6 on the whole transaction); and, two years later, gave up publishing for the jute business. At the subsequent sale the reamaining 99 copies, together with an old tennis racquet and the office hair-brush, went in a single lot to a second-hand furniture dealer for one and-ninepence…Yours sadly, Jimmy, A.A. Milne"
Milne did not like this book and considerred The Day's Play (1910) as his first book.
With additional correspondence:
TLS from Daphne Milne to Jimmie from Milne's Cotchford Farm saying how sorry she didn't see him in UK. Envelope addressed to Dorchester Hotel
WITH: Address label suggesting thta Mcrae bring this copy to England for Milne to autograph.
WITH: 3 TLSs from Duttons, Inc Bookshop about this book To Elliott B.Macrae.
