Books from the Collection of Olive Brockwell (1896-1978)
'If I open my fingers a little bit more,
I can see Nanny's dressing-gown on the door.
It's a beautiful blue, but it hasn't a hood.
Oh! God bless Nanny and make her good.'
The deep and lasting relationship between Christopher Robin Milne and Olive Brockwell, his Nanny, is well-documented. Its atmosphere of cosy and protective intimacy, which Christopher Robin felt lacking from his own parents, nevertheless pervades much of A. A. Milne's writing for children, and perhaps explains some of its perennial appeal. Apart from her appearance in 'Vespers', Nanny was 'Alice' in 'Buckingham Palace' (for the sake of the rhyme), 'Nan' in the nursery, but mostly, in a household peculiarly prone to nick-names, she was 'Nou'. Christopher Robin (known almost from birth as 'Moon' or 'Billy Moon') went on to dedicate his autobiography of 1974 to her with the words, "To remind you of those enchanted places where the past will always be present." His earliest memory is of Nanny, and he describes their extraordinarily close relationship: "I was all hers and remained all hers until the age of nine. Other people hovered round the edges, but they meant little. My total loyalty was to her ... I can only guess that, though I might not have missed my mother, and would certainly not have missed father, I would have missed Nanny - most desolately." In 1965, in an interview with The Sunday Times, Olive Brockwell spoke about A. A. Milne: "He never scorned Christopher Robin's fancies and if the boy wanted his nursery pets to be included in conversations and games, Mr Milne always entered into the spirit of the thing and spoke to the toys as if they were real people".
If Milne was 'the poet laureate of the nursery', then Nanny was its presiding deity, and her personality influenced some of the twentieth century's best-loved and most abiding children's literature.
MILNE, A. A. & E. H. SHEPARD (illustrator). The House at Pooh Corner, London: Methuen, 1928, 8°, FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY FROM A. A. MILNE AND CHRISTOPHER ROBIN TO OLIVE BROCKWELL, the title signed "A. A. Milne" and inscribed, "To my darling Nan with love from Moon", a preliminary leaf inscribed by Olive Brockwell, "Alice, Christopher Robin's Nannie, Olive Brockwell", illustrations by Shepard, original de-luxe pictorial limp blue morocco gilt (very lightly rubbed), g.e.
Details
MILNE, A. A. & E. H. SHEPARD (illustrator). The House at Pooh Corner, London: Methuen, 1928, 8°, FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY FROM A. A. MILNE AND CHRISTOPHER ROBIN TO OLIVE BROCKWELL, the title signed "A. A. Milne" and inscribed, "To my darling Nan with love from Moon", a preliminary leaf inscribed by Olive Brockwell, "Alice, Christopher Robin's Nannie, Olive Brockwell", illustrations by Shepard, original de-luxe pictorial limp blue morocco gilt (very lightly rubbed), g.e.