A hand-drawn map of Winnie-the-Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood has shattered the record for the Most expensive book illustration sold at auction.

At an auction held by Sotheby's in London, UK, on Tuesday 10 July the 1926 drawing by Ernest Howard Shepard fetched £430,000; almost three times its expected sale price and beating the previous record by more than £100,000.

Map of Hundred Acre Wood. Image: Sotheby's

The Original Map of the Hundred Acre Wood illustration was created for A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh woodland setting, and appeared on the endpapers of the Winnie-the-Pooh book.

The illustration is supposed to be the work of the character Christopher Robin and includes locations on the map purposely misspelled, such as 'Big Stones and Rox', 'Nice For Piknicks' and '100 Aker Wood'.

The map is signed off by Christopher with 'Drawn by me and Mr Shepard helpd'.

The illustration has remained in a private collection for the past five decades.

The record title was previously held by E.H. Shepard's illustration For A Long Time They Looked At The River Beneath Them..., a drawing of Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin playing Poohsticks, which sold for £314,500.

Shepard is a renowned English artist, best known for his illustrations in The Wind and the Willows and Winnie-the-Pooh.

Winnie the Pooh

Shepard illustrated four of A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh books. The character and an illustration of the bear first appeared in a poem about Winnie-the-Pooh that featured in the verse book When We Were Very Young (1924).

He then went on to star in Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), The House at Pooh Corner (1928), and Now We Are Six (1927).

Shepard produced at least two other drawings of the Hundred Acre Wood map; one was sold by Sotheby's in 2008, and the other is part of the V&A Museum collection.

We have many other Winnie-the-pooh related records, including the Largest Winnie-the-Pooh memorabilia collection, which is held by collector and ultra-fan Deb Hoffman.

Take a look at her collection in the video below!