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Edward
'Winnie-the-Pooh' Bear or sometimes referred to as Pooh, is a fictional
bear created by A. A. Milne. He appears in the books Winnie-the-Pooh
(1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne also included several
poems about Winnie-the-Pooh in the children’s poetry books When We Were
Very Young and Now We Are Six. All four volumes were illustrated by E.
H. Shepard.
The hyphen was later dropped when Walt Disney Productions adapted the
Pooh stories
 into
a series of Winnie the Pooh featurettes which became one of the
company's most successful franchises worldwide.
The Pooh stories have been translated into many languages, notably
including Alexander Lenard's Latin translation, Winnie ille Pu, which
was first published in 1958, and, in 1960, became the first
foreign-language book to be featured on the New York Times Bestseller
List.
Milne named the character Winnie-the-Pooh after a toy bear owned by his
son, Christopher Robin Milne, who was the basis for the character
Christopher Robin. His toys also lent their names to most of the other
characters, except for Owl and Rabbit, who were probably based on real
animals, and the Gopher character, who was added in the Disney version.
Christopher Robin's toy bear is now on display at the Donnell Library
Center Central Children's Room in New York.
 Christopher
Milne had named his toy after Winnipeg, a bear which he and his father
often saw at London Zoo, and "Pooh," a swan they had met while on
holiday. The bear, called "Winnie," was known as a gentle bear who never
attacked anyone, and she was much loved for her playfulness. This is
exactly what inspired Milne to write about Pooh Bear. Pooh the swan
appears as a character in its own right in When We Were Very Young.
The home of the Milnes, Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England, was the
basis for the setting of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. The name of the
fictional "Hundred Acre Wood" is reminiscent of the Five Hundred Acre
Wood, which lies just outside Ashdown Forest and includes some of the
locations mentioned in the book, such as the Enchanted Place.
Though Charles Scribner, The New York Evening Post, and St. Nicholas
Magazine published Milne’s stories with illustrations by several of the
more famous American artists of the 1920s, Milne’s original version is
better known to have been illustrated by E.H. Shepard. Though Shepard
decorated the books published by Methuen and E.P. Dutton, he preferred
to be known as a political cartoonist for London’s Punch Magazine.
Shepard’s only known painting of Winnie-the-Pooh is on display at the
Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
In 1930 illustrator/producer Stephen Slesinger and his company, Stephen
Slesinger, Inc.,
adapted the Winnie-the-Pooh character for use in children’s theatre, on
radio and TV, in story-telling records with Jimmy Stewart and Gene
Kelly, in song recordings, in early animated paper films, and in the
promotion of goods and the advertising of services.
Slesinger, who was the largest developer of comic and children’s book
character rights in the 1930s and 1940s, elevated Pooh to best-loved
bear in history.[citation needed] With the help of Dutton, Pooh’s
American publisher, Pooh sales reached $50 million in 1931, according to
trade reports.[citation needed]
Upon his death in 1956, A. A. Milne left the rights to Pooh and his
other characters in trust to four beneficiaries: The Garrick Club,
Westminster School, The Royal Literary Fund, and the A. A. Milne Family.
In countries where copyright terms are no longer than required by the
Berne Convention, the copyrights to the Pooh stories will expire at the
end of 2006. However, Shepard's illustrations will remain under
copyright until 2026, as he died in 1976.
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