Famous for his illustrations for Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in
the Willows, E H Shepard was a talented writer himself, as this
second volume of his autobiography, the successor to Drawn from
Memory, demonstrates. It spans the years from 1890 when he was ten
to 1904, a crucial period of his life covering the early death of
his mother, his education and his entrance into the Royal Academy,
and culminating with his marriage. One of the pleasures of reading
this book is the straightforward style with which Shepard recounts
his memories. The uncertainty of being shunted from one residence
to another, St John's Wood to Hammersmith to Blackheath, and the
horror of being bullied and beaten at various schools by both
teachers and older pupils, are expressed clearly with neither
rancour nor self-pity. Other events, such as travelling to the West
End to join in festivities to mark Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee
in 1897, and cross-channel trips with his father, brother and
sister to Rouen and Hamburg, are told with a delightfully boyish
sense of adventure and enjoyment. The book is enhanced immeasurably
by more than a hundred of Shepard's illustrations, which match the
charm of his prose. Drawn tightly and economically, the boat trips
on rivers, horse-drawn trams, street parties, Sunday promenades,
lugubrious headmasters and music-hall entertainers all combine to
evoke a sense of innocence of a bygone age. Most people today look
back on the Victorian era as being stuffy, repressive, riddled with
social inequality and blighted by the self-righteousness of the
ruling class, but Shepard manages to convey the positive outlook,
completely free of cynicism, shared by so many of his
contemporaries. Highly recommended. (Kirkus UK)
Following "Drawn From Memory", this is the second volume of memoirs
by the artist of "Winnie the Pooh" and "The Wind in the Willows".
It describes Shepard's experiences through school, his student days
and his marriage to a fellow art student shortly after he had
succeeded, at the age of 24, in getting a picture hung at the Royal
Academy Summer Exhibition. These memoirs end on his wedding day,
facing married life with #70 in the bank as his total financial
resources, and yet full of hope and confidence for the future.
Ernest Shepard, "Kipper" to his friends, was born in 1879. He
attended art school at the Royal Academy and served in World War I,
after which he made his living as an artist and political
cartoonist for "Punch" magazine.
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