E. H. Shepard’s original 1926 map of the Hundred Acre Wood sold at auction for £430,000.
The map appeared in the opening pages of A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and helped establish the geography of Pooh’s fictional world. It shows locations associated with the stories, including the woodland paths and homes of the characters. Shepard’s drawings made the imagined landscape feel like a recognisable English countryside.
The auction took place at Sotheby’s in London in 2018. The £430,000 result was reported as a world record for a book illustration at the time. It demonstrates the continuing cultural and financial importance of the original artwork, separate from later Disney designs.
The map is often confused with the real Ashdown Forest landscape, which inspired Milne’s setting. Ashdown Forest provided the real-world inspiration, but Shepard’s map is a fictional creation for the books. The Hundred Acre Wood itself is not a literal map of any one English location.