A collection of manuscripts by A.A. Milne relating to the composition and publication of Now We Are Six. Comprising:-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 paperclip 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. Solitude. Single page signed by Milne at the base and with a note in pencil (for E.H. Shepard) "The 'house' should be as little as possible. Just 3 sticks tied together as the top, for instance - like the beginning of a wigwam".Sneezles. Two pages, autograph authorial corrections to lines 25 and 26, changing " Come quick / just as quick as you can" to the published "To tell them what ought / To be done.", and line 30 from "In a van" to "At a run", to make the rhyme with the other changes.Buttercup Days. One page.Journey's End. One page, some sections underlined in pencil.Furry Bear. One page, authorial autograph correction to the first line, changing 'wear' to 'were'.Forgiven. One page.Knight-In-Armour. One page, headed "Now We Are Six" in pencil.The Little Black Hen. Three pages with Milne's name and address typed at the base. Occasional marginal lines in pencil.The Good Little Girl. One page, with Milne's name and address typed at the base.Twice Times. One page, with an authorial pencil correction to the third line of verse six, changing 'due' to 'one'.6. A single page of Milne's autograph instructions for the ordering 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.

The remaining manuscripts from the formation of Milne's third Winnie the Pooh book, Now We Are Six, from the collection of Milne's publisher.
Following the exceptional success of When We Were Very Young, Milne continued to write children's verse, even as he was writing Winnie 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 prepared 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 collection, much of the creative work had already been done and it was a question of drawing together the already published poems and ordering 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 Winnie the Pooh, that he also features in this book, "Pooh want us to sat that he thought it was a different book; and he hopes you wont mind, but he walked through it one day looking for his friend Piglet, and sat down on the some the pages by mistake."
The manuscripts for Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner were produced as a unit and preserved intact to be bequeathed in Milne's will to his alma mater, Trinity College Cambridge.
Even his work for When We Were Very Young, also in part serialised in Punch prior to publication in book form, had the advantage of being produced over a shorter period of time. It caught the eye of the American collector, Carl Forzheimer who, with extraordinary perspicacity, asked ASW Rosenbach to acquire as many as remained of Milne's manuscripts and typescripts for the poems directly from the author, where they were kept complete until sold en bloc at Sotheby's in 1986 for £132,000.
However, all that appears to remain of the material used for the creation of Now We Are Six are these papers, sent by Milne in stages to his publisher.

PROVENANCE: Frederick Muller (Milne's publisher at Methuen); Leslie Smith (who inherited the running of Muller's publishing company); by family descent.

Stock ID: 45908