diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.1.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.1.0.rst
index 0d2254e401103..6eb61f14d5629 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.1.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.1.0.rst
@@ -1027,6 +1027,7 @@ I/O
 - :meth:`HDFStore.keys` has now an optional `include` parameter that allows the retrieval of all native HDF5 table names (:issue:`29916`)
 - Bug in :meth:`read_excel` for ODS files removes 0.0 values (:issue:`27222`)
 - Bug in :meth:`ujson.encode` was raising an `OverflowError` with numbers larger than sys.maxsize (:issue: `34395`)
+- Bug in :meth:`HDFStore.append_to_multiple` was raising a ``ValueError`` when the min_itemsize parameter is set (:issue:`11238`)
 
 Plotting
 ^^^^^^^^
diff --git a/pandas/io/pytables.py b/pandas/io/pytables.py
index 800e9474cc0f8..0e5d7b007bd89 100644
--- a/pandas/io/pytables.py
+++ b/pandas/io/pytables.py
@@ -1303,6 +1303,8 @@ def append_to_multiple(
                 valid_index = valid_index.intersection(index)
             value = value.loc[valid_index]
 
+        min_itemsize = kwargs.pop("min_itemsize", None)
+
         # append
         for k, v in d.items():
             dc = data_columns if k == selector else None
@@ -1310,7 +1312,12 @@ def append_to_multiple(
             # compute the val
             val = value.reindex(v, axis=axis)
 
-            self.append(k, val, data_columns=dc, **kwargs)
+            filtered = (
+                {key: value for (key, value) in min_itemsize.items() if key in v}
+                if min_itemsize is not None
+                else None
+            )
+            self.append(k, val, data_columns=dc, min_itemsize=filtered, **kwargs)
 
     def create_table_index(
         self,
diff --git a/pandas/tests/io/pytables/test_store.py b/pandas/tests/io/pytables/test_store.py
index 524e9f41a7731..c69992471fc9b 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/io/pytables/test_store.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/io/pytables/test_store.py
@@ -3697,6 +3697,33 @@ def test_append_to_multiple_dropna_false(self, setup_path):
 
             assert not store.select("df1a").index.equals(store.select("df2a").index)
 
+    def test_append_to_multiple_min_itemsize(self, setup_path):
+        # GH 11238
+        df = pd.DataFrame(
+            {
+                "IX": np.arange(1, 21),
+                "Num": np.arange(1, 21),
+                "BigNum": np.arange(1, 21) * 88,
+                "Str": ["a" for _ in range(20)],
+                "LongStr": ["abcde" for _ in range(20)],
+            }
+        )
+        expected = df.iloc[[0]]
+
+        with ensure_clean_store(setup_path) as store:
+            store.append_to_multiple(
+                {
+                    "index": ["IX"],
+                    "nums": ["Num", "BigNum"],
+                    "strs": ["Str", "LongStr"],
+                },
+                df.iloc[[0]],
+                "index",
+                min_itemsize={"Str": 10, "LongStr": 100, "Num": 2},
+            )
+            result = store.select_as_multiple(["index", "nums", "strs"])
+            tm.assert_frame_equal(result, expected)
+
     def test_select_as_multiple(self, setup_path):
 
         df1 = tm.makeTimeDataFrame()