A collection of drawings and correspondence between Winnie the Pooh creator A.A. Milne, illustrator E.H. Shepard, and publisher Frederick Muller, sold last month at British auction house Fieldings after a man found them stuffed in a plastic bag in his late father’s attic.
Simon Smith told the BBC that he was “gobsmacked” to discover the archive while going through the estate of his father, Leslie Smith, at his home in Malvern. The elder Smith had worked as the head of advertising and publicity for George Allen & Unwin and managed press for the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved Lord of The Rings trilogy.
“We were just clearing out the attic and found a plastic carrier bag full of letters,” Smith told the BBC.
The sale included 34 individual lots with drafts and proofs for The House at Pooh Corner, which sold for £18,000 ($22,400), and The Christopher Robin Birthday Book, which sold for £9,500 ($11,800), along with Milne autographs. The total sale including buyer’s premium was £120,000 ($149,700), the auction house said in a statement.
“By the way, Pooh protests strongly against being called a ‘fabulous monster’ in today’s Observer,” Milne wrote in one letter sent in March 1928. In another, he expressed frustrations with drawings by Shepard, writing that the illustrator “must do new drawings for April and September as the originals are very poor.”
‘We are thrilled and slightly emotional after handling this wonderful and unique archive,” Fieldings director Will Farmer said. “Selling this collection which hasn’t been seen for nearly 100 years has been an absolute career highlight, and for the family to trust Fieldings Auctioneers to look after such an important collection was a huge honor.”
Farmer told the BBC that two-thirds of the collection was purchased by British buyers while the remaining third is going to collectors in the United States.
Smith said he was happy to sell the items off to people who would appreciate them, noting that his father had “lots of great-grandchildren” so it would have posed a challenge to split them up among family. “But we would like to see them somewhere useful,” he said.
Among the documents, Smith also found an October 1957 letter from Tolkien addressed to his father thanking him for a “specimen facsimile” that had been sent to him by the advertising boss.
The auction also included a letter sent by Tolkien earlier that month to the publishing house requesting that he collect an object referred to as “Rocket.” Fieldings suggested that the rocket may refer to the statuette he won for the Lord of the Rings from the 15th World of Science Fiction Convention in 1957. Tolkien described the statuette as “absurd” but kept the award; it is still in the family’s possession.
It was not made clear if the two letters are related. The “rocket” letter sold in the auction for £2,800 ($3,490) while the “specimen facsimile” letter sold for £4,200 ($5,240).
“For any fans out there of fantasy fiction, this is an absolute must-have,” Farmer said in a video on social media. “A beautiful, beautiful example of this ephemeral collection.”