History of Winnie The Pooh

During the first World War, troops from Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada) were being transported to eastern Canada, on their way to Europe, where they were  to join the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade. When the train stopped at White River, Ontario, a lieutenant called  Harry Colebourn bought a small female black bear cub for $20 from a hunter who had killed  its mother. He named  her 'Winnipeg', after his hometown of Winnipeg, or 'Winnie' for short.

Winnie became  the mascot of the Brigade and went to Britain with the unit. When the Brigade was posted  to the battlefields of France, Colebourn, now a Captain, took  Winnie to the London Zoo for a long loan. He formally presented  the London Zoo with Winnie in December 1919 where he became  a popular attraction and lived until 1934.

The bear was also very popular with Christopher Robin, son of author A.A. Milne. It was his favourite animal at the Zoo, and he often spent time inside the cage with it. The bear was Christopher Robin's inspiration for calling his own teddy bear Winnie... Winnie the Pooh (this teddy bear started out with the name of Edward Bear). The name Pooh originally belonged to a swan, as can be seen( in the introduction of Milne's 'When We Were Very Young'.

A.A. Milne started to write a series of books about Winnie the Pooh, his son Christopher Robin, and their friends in the Hundred Acre Wood. These other characters, such as Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger, Kanga and Roo were also based on stuffed animals belonging to Christopher Robin. The characters, Rabbit and Owl, were based on animals that lived, like the swan Pooh, in the surrounding area of Milne's country home, Cotchford Farm in Ashdown Forest, Sussex. It is this area on which the 100-Acre-Wood was based.

'Winnie-the-Pooh was published by Methuen on October 14th, 1926, the verses 'Now We are Six' in 1927, and 'The House at Pooh Corner' in 1928. All these books were illustrated in a beautiful way by E.H. Shepard, which made the books even more magical. The Pooh-books became firm favorites with old and young alike and have been translated into almost every known language. A conservative figure for the total sales of the four Methuen editions (including When We Were Very Young) up to the end of 1996 would be over 20 million copies. These figures do not include sales of the four books published by Dutton in Canada and the States, nor the foreign-language editions(S) printed in more than 25 languages the world over!