Winnie-the-Pooh
Who wrote Winnie-the-Pooh?
How old is Winnie-the-Pooh?
Who are the main characters in Winnie-the-Pooh?
Who illustrated Winnie-the-Pooh?
Winnie-the-Pooh, collection of childrenâs stories by English writer A.A. Milne, published in 1926. Milne wrote the episodic stories of Winnie-the-Pooh and its sequel, The House at Pooh Corner (1928), for his young son, Christopher Robin Milne, whose toy animals were the basis for many of the characters and whose name was used for the young boy who appears in the tales as the benign master of the animals.
The enormous success of Winnie-the-Pooh became complicated for the people behind it. A.A. Milne grew frustrated that his childrenâs books came to overshadow the plays, novels, essays, and other writing that had made up much of his career. Illustrator Ernest H. Shepard developed a similar resentment as his drawings of Pooh became more famous than the rest of his work. Milneâs son, Christopher Robin Milne, faced a more personal burden: Classmates teased him over his fictional counterpart, and as an adult he tried to distance himself from the character and the publicity that had followed him since childhood.
The main character, Winnie-the-Pooh (sometimes called simply Pooh or Edward Bear), is a good-natured honey-loving bear who lives in the Hundred Acre Wood, a fictional setting modeled on Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England.
- Christopher Robin: The boy the animals turn to when a problem gets too big for them. He leads their expedition to the North Pole. When Pooh gets stuck in Rabbitâs doorway, Christopher Robin decides that Pooh must wait until he is thin enough to be freed, and he reads to Pooh over the week it takes him to grow thinner. He shares his name with Milneâs son.
- Eeyore: An old, gray donkey who is gloomy but kind and who can always be counted on for a self-deprecating remark or two. Odd mishaps seem to follow Eeyore: His missing tail turns up at Owlâs house, and Pooh and Piglet mistake his stick house for a loose pile and use it to build him another home elsewhere.
- Piglet: Poohâs small and often nervous friend, whose loyalty frequently outweighs his fears. When he sets out to give Eeyore a balloon for his birthday, he accidentally pops it on the way but still brings the remains as a gift. Piglet is braver than his size suggests, and he faces creatures such as a Heffalump (a fictional creature resembling an elephant). He is one of Poohâs closest friends.
- Owl: The one the others treat as the expert on almost everything and who is always ready with a story or piece of advice. Owl lives at The Chestnuts, the most splendid house in the Hundred Acre Wood, which has both a knocker and a bell-pullâa cord that rings a bell indoors.
- Tigger: An exuberant tiger who is fond of bouncing around on his tail and who was introduced in the 1928 book The House at Pooh Corner. In one adventure he boasts that Tiggers can climb trees, only to discover that getting down is much harder than getting up. Tigger has a taste for Extract of Malt, a sweet syrup given to Roo as a tonic.
- Roo: A baby kangaroo who rides in his motherâs pouch and is game for any adventure, rather more than Kanga would like. Roo falls into a stream and discovers he can swim and later gets stuck up a tree with Tigger.
- Kanga: Rooâs mother, who is practical and attentive. She is the fastest animal in the Hundred Acre Wood and is known for keeping track of everyday details, such as Rooâs clothes, and handing out baths and instructions. She later looks after Tigger.
- Rabbit: A busy, confident planner who is convinced that one of his schemes can solve almost any problem. Rabbit is an expert thinker. When Tiggerâs bouncing becomes too much for him, Rabbit devises a scheme to lead him deep into the Hundred Acre Wood and leave him disoriented, hoping the experience will make him more humble. Instead Rabbit is the one who loses his way.
The bear and swan that inspired Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Poohâs name was inspired by a real bear. In 1914 Canadian army veterinarian Harry Colebourn bought an orphaned female bear cub in White River, Ontario, while traveling to a military camp. He named her Winnipeg, or Winnie for short, for the Canadian city where he had settled. Winnie accompanied Colebournâs regiment to England and became its unofficial mascot. When Colebourn left for the front, he placed Winnie at the London Zoo, where she became a favorite with visitors. One of those visitors was Christopher Robin Milne, who was so taken with Winnie that he renamed his teddy bear for her.
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The name Pooh first belonged to a swan that Christopher Robin visited and fed. In the introduction to his poetry collection When We Were Very Young (1924), Milne joked that the name was particularly suited to a swan: If the bird ignored its caller, âPooh!â could simply sound like an expression of indifference.
Winnie-the-Poohâs adventures
Winnie-the-Pooh, a self-described âBear of Very Little Brain,â gets himself into all kinds of sticky situations, and the original bookâs 10 chapters recount his various adventures. In the first chapter Pooh hears bees in the treetop and thinks they must be making honey. After unsuccessfully attempting to climb the tree, he uses a balloon to float and pretend he is a cloud, but the bees are suspicious. Deciding they are the wrong sort of bees, Pooh realizes he is unable to get down, and he enlists the help of Christopher Robin, who pops the balloon with a gun. In a later adventure Pooh visits Rabbit and, after eating too much, gets stuck in Rabbitâs doorway. For the next week Pooh fasts while Christopher Robin keeps him company. Finally he is slim enough for the others to pull him free. Poohâs kindness is also evident, notably when he finds Eeyoreâs missing tail in chapter four.
The stories are simply written to appeal to young readers and are full of comic moments as well as silly verses. However, the work also is notable for its insights into human behavior, and Milneâs characters are endearing but also complex.
The illustrator behind Winnie-the-Pooh
The bookâs illustrator, Ernest H. Shepard, was an artist for the British humor magazine Punch, to which Milne also contributed. Shepard also illustrated Kenneth Grahameâs The Wind in the Willows, the classic childrenâs tale about the adventures of Mole, Rat, Toad, and Badger. Shepardâs drawings of Pooh, however, were inspired by Growler, a teddy bear owned by Shepardâs son, Graham, rather than Christopher Robinâs bear. Milne was so pleased with Shepardâs illustrations that he wrote a playful verse in the illustratorâs copy of the book, imagining Shepard decorating Milneâs gravestone with pictures of Pooh and Piglet.
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Disney adaptations
Walt Disney acquired screen rights to Milneâs Pooh stories in 1961, and the character made his Disney animated debut in the featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966). Disney artists based the screen characters on Shepardâs illustrations but adapted them into the studioâs visual style, helping establish the familiar yellow version of Pooh seen in later adaptations.
Two more featurettes followed, and all three were later combined with new linking animation as the feature-length The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977).