New Pooh?

This report from The Bookseller, a British publishing-industry journal, has already been echoed around the world:

An authorised sequel to A A Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner is to be released by Egmont Publishing in October. The contents of the book are a closely guarded secret but will reflect Milne’s idea that "whatever happens, a little boy and his bear will always be playing," said author David Benedictus.

The forthcoming title, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, will be published in a similar format to the existing Classic Winnie-the-Pooh books. The text will be illustrated by Mark Burgess who has already illustrated a number of Winnie-the-Pooh titles.

At first I was a little troubled that the Milne and E. H. Shepard estates were chasing more bucks before their lucrative copyrights run out in 1926. We've seen the heirs of Margaret Mitchell, J. M. Barrie, and James Joyce do that in various ways, and the results have been mixed.

I began feeling a little better about the idea when The Bookseller went on to report:

• Benedictus wrote this new book after working on some Pooh adaptations and then submitted it to the Milne and Shepard estates for their authorization; the estates didn't set out to commission a sequel.
• The estates had actually turned down some other "suggested sequels."

But then I recalled that the Disney Company bought a lot of the rights to Pooh about ten years ago, paying the heirs a lump sum--which means they won't see more money unless they produce new intellectual property. There has been a long series of lawsuits among those heirs, the Slesinger family who originally licensed the Pooh characters, and Disney, running up lawyers' tabs. So the estate's decision to authorize Benedictus's book might not be based purely on literary merit. We can only hope it is.

I resist an automatic reaction against latter-day sequels. I've enjoyed some of those stories very well. Others not only miss the target, they seem to miss the point of the original.

ADDENDUM: Today's Publishers Weekly report added more food for thought about the genesis of this project:

While working on post-production for those audiobooks--which required the approval of the Trustees of the Pooh Properties--he [Benedictus] decided to write a pair of stories about Pooh and send them to the trustees (the four trustees own the copyright for the text and represent the estate of Pooh illustrator E.H. Shepard).

Eight years passed, according to Benedictus, but in 2006 he got a call from the trustees. Over the years the trustees had seen several proposals for sequels. “We had looked at a number of people, including my own poor efforts,” said Michael Brown, chairman of the trust, adding that the idea for authorizing a sequel had been in his mind “for a very long time.” But he said that the timing of the book’s release this year was a matter of various pieces coming together--including finding the right contributors.

So Benedictus wrote his first Pooh stories in 1998, and the estates started to pursue the idea with him in 2006. How do those years match up to the business timeline?

Update on E. H. Shepard Auction

In November, I noted an upcoming auction of E. H. Shepard drawings from the Winnie the Pooh books at Sotheby's in London. Last week Reuters reported that the sale exceeded even the high expectations, with "He went on tracking, and Piglet...ran after him" selling for £115,250 and "Bump, bump, bump--going up the stairs" for £97,250. Even the latter-day Piglet drawing I linked to turned out to be worth £8,750.

Getting Ready for the Party

It seemed a little unfair that Sotheby’s estimate for this E. H. Shepard illustration of Piglet is only £7,000-9,000 when pictures of Pooh and others are £20,000-70,000. Yes, Piglet's small, but is that a fair determinant of his value?

Then I realized from the auction’s catalog that this is actually a sketch that Shepard created in 1958, based on his earlier, published drawing. And that’s probably the reason for the lower price. Sotheby's estimates for Shepard drawings not connected to Winnie the Pooh at all are even less, though still in the four figures.

Incidentally, the malls will be so crowded tomorrow. Why not shop for me online? I'm only trying to make it easier for you.