Alan Alexander Milne’s beloved books, Winnie the Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928), reign as the end to Britain’s ‘golden age’ of children’s literature. The stuffed Bear of Very Little Brain captured the hearts of both children and adults alike. In 1929, Milne commissioned his neighbor, Harold Fraser Simson, to adapt Pooh’s Hums into a collection of seventeen songs for children, which included written introductions by Milne and illustrations by E.H. Shepard. Pooh’s naivete and indisputable desire for honey are openly expressed through the lyrical ease of his Hums, poetic asides sprawled throughout his adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood. The Hums of Pooh encapsulates Pooh’s simplicity through its songs’ ternary forms and approachable stepwise melodies. Critics considered this successful collaboration as a delightful Christmas present, ‘equal [my emphasis] to any of its predecessors’ (The Musical Times 40). In the song book, Milne lists “The More it Snows” as his personal favorite, a binary, stepping march encompassing ‘tiddely poms’ to resemble a call and response of bugles. Our curator’s favorite is “Christopher Robin is Going,” which is sung not by Pooh, but Eeyore. His multiple rests frequently and awkwardly pause the preceding rhapsodic lyricism, mirroring the difficulty to say goodbye to a beloved friend.

Readers interested in learning the music and seeing more of Harold Fraser-Simson’s adaptations of Milne’s work, can check out The Pooh Song Book (1961) or visit the Harry Ransom Center to see a first edition Hums of Pooh, as well as sketches of their collaborated adaptation Toad of Toad Hall (1929).