E. H. Shepard

E.H. Shepard was educated at St. Paul’s School before gaining a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Art. He had already become a successful book and magazine illustrator by the start of World War One and had begun an association with the humorous magazine Punch that would last nearly fifty years.

Shepard joined the Royal Artillery in 1915 and was soon using his skills to provide sketches of the battlefield for his superiors. By the end of the war he had risen to the rank of Major and was awarded the Military Cross. He joined the full-time staff of “Punch” as a political cartoonist in 1921 and was recommended by a fellow member of staff to the writer A.A. Milne. Shepard illustrated Milne’s book of poems “When We Were Very Young” and went on achieve fame as the illustrator of the “Winnie the Pooh” series of children’s books. He was reported as being resentful that this work overshadowed his other work, which included illustrations for over sixty books. His daughter, Mary, was also an artist whose most well-known work were illustrations for P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins series of books.

Shepard’s entry Here and There is the illustration for the poem of the same name, published in Punch in 1924. A few years later it adorned the frontispiece of the book “Fun & Fantasy” with drawings by Shepard. The poem was written by Evoe, a pseudonym for Edmund George Valpy Knox, then editor of Punch.