Piglet is Entirely Surrounded by Water

Magnet paperback, 1983 reprint of the 1982 Magnet edition. Blue pictorial wrappers featuring Piglet at the window of his house. Magnet logo to lower cover. Original printed price 95p. ISBN 0 416 24480 7. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd, Aylesbury, Bucks. This standalone picture book reprints Chapter IX of A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh (Methuen, 14 October 1926), the episode in which Piglet, a Very Small Animal, finds himself entirely surrounded by floodwater. After days of rain he writes a “missage” in a bottle — “HELP! PIGLIT (ME)” / “IT’S ME PIGLIT, HELP HELP!” — and throws it from the window. Pooh, marooned with his honey pots on a branch, recovers the bottle, cannot read it, and later joins Christopher Robin in a makeshift boat (The Floating Bear / Brain of Pooh) to effect the rescue. The text is the original Milne wording, with Shepard’s line drawings coloured for this children’s format. Edition history as stated on the copyright page: text and line illustrations copyright under the Berne Convention; US copyright 1926 by E. P. Dutton & Co.; renewal 1954 by A. A. Milne; colouring of the illustrations copyright 1973 by Ernest H. Shepard and Methuen Children’s Books Ltd; first published in this edition 1976 by Methuen Children’s Books Ltd; Magnet paperback first published 1982; reprinted 1983. One of the “Piglet Paperbacks in Magnet Books” series, which excerpted complete stories from Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner for younger readers and reading aloud. Condition: Very Good used copy, consistent with a well-handled early-1980s children’s paperback. Covers show minor creasing, corner bumps, edge-rubbing, light surface marks and some fading to the blue wrappers; Internally complete; pages age-toned in places with the usual handling wear of a read copy; no ownership inscriptions noted in the photographed leaves; binding holding. Please judge from the photographs, which show the actual book offered. A. A. Milne (Alan Alexander Milne, 1882–1956) was an English playwright, essayist and Punch contributor whose lasting fame rests on four children’s books created around his son Christopher Robin and the nursery toys of Cotchford Farm and Ashdown Forest: When We Were Very Young (1924), Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), Now We Are Six (1927) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Before Pooh he was a successful West End dramatist; afterwards the books overshadowed the rest of his work. The flood episode is among the most anthologised Pooh chapters, balancing anxiety, friendship and comic invention. Ernest Howard Shepard (1879–1976), Punch cartoonist and one of the principal British book illustrators of the twentieth century, drew the original Pooh decorations from 1924 onward, using his son’s bear Growler among other models. His economical line, combined here with the 1973 authorised colouring undertaken with Methuen in his lifetime, is the visual identity of the “classic” rather than Disney Pooh. Shepard also illustrated Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. These Magnet paperbacks are useful working copies of that Shepard/Milne collaboration rather than fine firsts. Suitable for readers, 1980s nostalgia, or as a filling copy in a Shepard/Milne working collection. Further photographs on request.