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The House at Pooh Corner
A. A. Milne
with the original colourillustrations by E.H. Shepard
First published in Great Britain 11 October 1928
by Methuen & Co. Ltd
Published in this edition 2004 by Egmont Books Limited
239 Kensington High Street, London W8 6SA
Text by A. A. Milne copyright © Trustees of the Pooh Properties
Line illustrations copyright © E. H. Shepard
Colouring of the illustrations © 1970 E. H. Shepard and Egmont UK Limited and © 1974 E. H. Shepard and Egmont UK Limited
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
First e-book edition April 2010
ISBN 978 1 4052 55820
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available
from the British Library
This paperback is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
You gave me Christopher Robin, and then
You breathed new life in Pooh.
Whatever of each has left my pen
Goes homing back to you.
My book is ready, and comes to greet
The mother it longs to see –
It would be my present to you, my sweet,
If it weren’t your gift to me.
An Introduction is to introduce people, but Christopher Robin and his friends, who have already been introduced to you, are now going to say Goodbye. So this is the opposite. When we asked Pooh what the opposite of an Introduction was he said ‘The what of a what?’ which didn’t help us as much as we had hoped, but luckily Owl kept his head and told us that the Opposite of an Introduction, my dear Pooh, was a Contradiction; and, as he is very good at long words, I am sure that that’s what it is.
Why we are having a Contradiction is because last week when Christopher Robin said to me, ‘What about that story you were going to tell me about what happened to Pooh when –’ I happened to say very quickly, ‘What about nine times a hundred and seven?’ And when we had done that one, we had one about cows going through a gate at two a minute, and there are three hundred in the field, so how many are left after an hour and a half? We find these very exciting, and when we have been excited quite enough, we curl up and go to sleep … and Pooh, sitting wakeful a little longer on his chair by our pillow, thinks Grand Thoughts to himself about Nothing, until he, too, closes his eyes and nods his head, and follows us on tiptoe into the Forest. There, still, we have magic adventures, more wonderful than any I have told you about; but now, when we wake up in the morning, they are gone before we can catch hold of them. How did the last one begin? ‘One day when Pooh was walking in the Forest, there were one hundred and seven cows on a gate … ’ No, you see, we have lost it. It was the best, I think. Well, here are some of the other ones, all that we shall remember now. But, of course it isn’t really Good-bye, because the Forest will always be there … and anybody who is Friendly with Bears can find it.
A. A. M.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE in which a house is built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore
CHAPTER TWO in which Tigger comes to the Forest and has breakfast
CHAPTER THREE in which a search is organdized, and Piglet nearly meets the Heffalump again
CHAPTER FOUR in which it is shown that Tiggers don’t climb trees
CHAPTER SIX in which Pooh invents a new game and Eeyore joins in
CHAPTER SEVEN in which Tigger is unbounced
CHAPTER EIGHT in which Piglet does a very grand thing
CHAPTER NINE in which Eeyore finds the Wolery and Owl moves into it
CHAPTER TEN in which Christopher Robin and Pooh come to an enchanted place, and we leave them there