It’s unthinkable now that A.A.
Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books could have been illustrated by anyone else than
Ernest Shepard, yet it nearly didn’t happen. According to one source I read,
Milne originally believed that Shepard’s style was unsuitable, and only agreed
to allow him to work on the verse book “Now We Are Six”. When he saw Shepard’s
work for the book, though, he changed his mind, and indeed, once he became
convinced that Shepard’s illustration was adding to the popularity of the
books, then he voluntarily paid Shepard a percentage of his royalties.
Shepard’s most beloved work after his
Winnie the Pooh illustrations are surely his illustrations of Kenneth Grahame’s
evergreen novel “The Wind in the Willows”, and it’s one of these that I’ve
chosen to copy.
