Origin ,
Kanga, Edward Bear ("Winnie-the-Pooh"),
Eeyore, and
Piglet).
Roo was also one of the original toys, but was lost by Christopher Robin in the 1930s.
A. A. Milne named the character Winnie-the-Pooh after a teddy bear owned by his son,
Christopher Robin Milne, on whom the character
Christopher Robin was based. Shepard in turn based his illustrations of Pooh on his own son's teddy bear named Growler, instead of Christopher Robin's bear. The rest of Christopher Milne's toys –
Piglet,
Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, and
Tigger – were incorporated into Milne's stories. Two more characters,
Owl and
Rabbit, were created by Milne's imagination.
Gopher was created for the Disney-produced films. In 1947, the toys came to the United States in the custody of Milne's US publisher, with whom they remained until 1987. The publisher then donated the toys to the New York Public Library. They have been on display at the
Main Branch of the New York Public Library in New York City ever since. and Winnie, 1914 In 1921, Milne bought his son Christopher Robin the toy bear from
Harrods department store. Christopher Robin had named his toy bear Edward, then Winnie, after a Canadian
black bear Winnie that he often saw at
London Zoo, and Pooh, a friend's pet swan they had encountered while on holiday. The bear cub was purchased from a hunter for
C$20 by Canadian Lieutenant
Harry Colebourn in
White River, Ontario, while en route to England during the First World War. Colebourn, a veterinary officer with the Fort Garry Horse cavalry regiment, named the bear Winnie after his adopted hometown in
Winnipeg,
Manitoba. Winnie was surreptitiously brought to England with her owner, and gained unofficial recognition as
The Fort Garry Horse regimental mascot. Colebourn left Winnie at the London Zoo while he and his unit were in France; after the war she was officially donated to the zoo, as she had become a much-loved attraction there. Pooh the swan appears as a character in its own right in
When We Were Very Young. In the first chapter of
Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne offers this explanation of why Winnie-the-Pooh is often simply known as "Pooh": American writer
William Safire surmised that the Milnes' invention of the name "Winnie the Pooh" may have also been influenced by the haughty character
Pooh-Bah in
Gilbert and Sullivan's
The Mikado (1885). A bronze sculpture of Winnie as a young cub, created by
Lorne McKean, was unveiled at London Zoo in September 1981 by Christopher Robin. The skull of Winnie is displayed at the
Hunterian Museum in London, the location of anatomical exhibits of the
Royal College of Surgeons of England, with a 2015 examination of the skull showing that she suffered from chronic periodontitis, an inflammation and loss of connective tissues supporting or surrounding the teeth, which can be caused by poor diet, such as the honey Christopher Robin spoon fed her.
Ashdown Forest: the setting for the stories , East Sussex, south-east England; it overlooks Five Hundred Acre Wood, the setting for Winnie-the-Pooh The Winnie-the-Pooh stories are set in
Ashdown Forest,
East Sussex, England. The forest is an area of tranquil open heathland on the highest sandy ridges of the
High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty situated 30 miles (50 km) south-east of London. In 1925 Milne, a Londoner, bought a country home a mile to the north of the forest at
Cotchford Farm, near
Hartfield. According to Christopher Robin Milne, while his father continued to live in London "...the four of us – he, his wife, his son and his son's nanny – would pile into a large blue, chauffeur-driven Fiat and travel down every Saturday morning and back again every Monday afternoon. And we would spend a whole glorious month there in the spring and two months in the summer." From the front lawn the family had a view across a meadow to a line of
alders that fringed the
River Medway, beyond which the ground rose through more trees until finally "above them, in the faraway distance, crowning the view, was a bare hilltop. In the centre of this hilltop was a clump of pines." Most of his father's visits to the forest at that time were, he noted, family expeditions on foot "to make yet another attempt to count the pine trees on Gill's Lap or to search for the marsh gentian". Christopher added that, inspired by Ashdown Forest, his father had made it "the setting for two of his books, finishing the second little over three years after his arrival". Many locations in the stories can be associated with real places in and around the forest. As Christopher Milne wrote in his autobiography: "Pooh's forest and Ashdown Forest are identical." For example, the fictional "
Hundred Acre Wood" was in reality Five Hundred Acre Wood; Galleon's Leap was inspired by the prominent hilltop of Gill's Lap, while a clump of trees just north of Gill's Lap became Christopher Robin's
The Enchanted Place, because no-one had ever been able to count whether there were 63 or 64 trees in the circle. The landscapes depicted in
E. H. Shepard's illustrations for the Winnie-the-Pooh books were directly inspired by the distinctive landscape of Ashdown Forest, with its high, open heathlands of heather, gorse, bracken and silver birch, which are punctuated by hilltop clumps of pine trees. Many of Shepard's illustrations can be matched to actual views, allowing for a degree of artistic licence. Shepard's sketches of pine trees and other forest scenes are held at the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The game of
Poohsticks was originally played by Christopher Robin Milne and his father on the wooden footbridge, Posingford Wood, close to Cotchford Farm. In the stories Pooh plays the game with the other characters, Christopher Robin, Tigger, and Eeyore. The location is now a tourist attraction, and it has become traditional to play the game there using sticks gathered in the nearby woodland. When the footbridge had to be replaced in 1999, the architect used as a main source drawings by Shepard in the books, and retained its precursor's original style.
First publication Christopher Robin's teddy bear made his character début, under the name Edward, in A. A. Milne's poem, "Teddy Bear", in the edition of 13 February 1924 of
Punch (E. H. Shepard had also included a similar bear in a cartoon published in
Punch the previous week), and the same poem was published in Milne's book of children's verse
When We Were Very Young (6 November 1924). Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name on 24 December 1925, in a Christmas story commissioned and published by the London newspaper
Evening News. It was illustrated by
J. H. Dowd. The first collection of Pooh stories appeared in the book
Winnie-the-Pooh. The
Evening News Christmas story reappeared as the first chapter of the book. At the beginning, it explained that Pooh was in fact Christopher Robin's Edward Bear, who had been renamed by the boy. He was renamed after
an American black bear at London Zoo called Winnie who got her name from the fact that her owner had come from
Winnipeg, Canada. The book was published in October 1926 by the publisher of Milne's earlier children's work,
Methuen, in England,
E. P. Dutton in the United States, and
McClelland & Stewart in Canada. The book was an immediate critical and commercial success. The children's author and literary critic
John Rowe Townsend described
Winnie-the-Pooh and its sequel
The House at Pooh Corner as "the spectacular British success of the 1920s" and praised its light, readable prose.
Appearance The original drawing of Pooh was based not on Christopher Robin's bear, but on Growler, the teddy bear belonging to Shepard's son Graham, according to James Campbell, husband of Shepard's great-granddaughter. When Campbell took over Shepard's estate in 2010, he discovered many drawings and unpublished writings, including early drawings of Pooh, that had not been seen in decades. Campbell said, "Both he and A. A. Milne realised that Christopher Robin's bear was too gruff-looking, not very cuddly, so they decided they would have to have a different bear for the illustrations."
Character In the Milne books, Pooh is naive and slow-witted, but he is also friendly, thoughtful, and steadfast. Although he and his friends agree that he is "a bear of very little brain", Pooh is occasionally acknowledged to have a clever idea, usually driven by common sense. These include riding in Christopher Robin's umbrella to rescue Piglet from a flood, discovering "the North Pole" by picking it up to help fish Roo out of the river, inventing the game of
Poohsticks, and getting Eeyore out of the river by dropping a large rock on one side of him to wash him towards the bank. Pooh is also a talented poet and the stories are frequently punctuated by his poems and "hums". Although he is humble about his slow-wittedness, he is comfortable with his creative gifts. When Owl's house blows down in a windstorm, trapping Pooh, Piglet and Owl inside, Pooh encourages Piglet (the only one small enough to do so) to escape and rescue them all by promising that "a respectful Pooh song" will be written about Piglet's feat. Later, Pooh muses about the creative process as he composes the song. Pooh is very fond of food, particularly
honey (which he spells "hunny"), but also condensed milk and other items. When he visits friends, his desire to be offered a snack is in conflict with the impoliteness of asking too directly. Though intent on giving Eeyore a pot of honey for his birthday, Pooh could not resist eating it on his way to deliver the present and so instead gives Eeyore "a useful pot to put things in". When he and Piglet are lost in the forest during Rabbit's attempt to "unbounce" Tigger, Pooh finds his way home by following the "call" of the honeypots from his house. Pooh makes it a habit to have "a little something" around 11:00 in the morning. As the clock in his house "stopped at five minutes to eleven some weeks ago", any time can be Pooh's snack time. Pooh is very social. After Christopher Robin, his closest friend is Piglet, and he most often chooses to spend his time with one or both of them. But he also habitually visits the other animals, often looking for a snack or an audience for his poetry as much as for companionship. His kind-heartedness means he goes out of his way to be friendly to Eeyore, visiting him and bringing him a birthday present and building him a house, despite receiving mostly disdain from Eeyore in return. Devan Coggan of
Entertainment Weekly saw a similarity between Pooh and
Paddington Bear, two "extremely polite British bears without pants", adding that "both bears share a philosophy of kindness and integrity".
Posthumous sequels An authorised sequel
Return to the Hundred Acre Wood was published on 5 October 2009. The author,
David Benedictus, has developed, but not changed, Milne's characterisations. The illustrations, by
Mark Burgess, are in the style of Shepard. department store in
Knightsbridge, London, where in 1921 Milne bought the stuffed toy for his son that would inspire the character. Pooh visits Harrods in the 2021 authorised prequel
Winnie-the-Pooh: Once There Was a Bear Another authorised sequel,
Winnie-the-Pooh: The Best Bear in All the World, was published by
Egmont in 2016. The sequel consists of four short stories by four leading children's authors,
Kate Saunders,
Brian Sibley, Paul Bright, and
Jeanne Willis. Illustrations are by Mark Burgess.
The Best Bear in All The World sees the introduction of a new character, Penguin, which was inspired by a long-lost photograph of Milne and his son Christopher with a toy penguin. In 2016,
Winnie-the-Pooh Meets the Queen was published to mark the 90th anniversary of Milne's creation and the 90th birthday of
Queen Elizabeth II. It sees Pooh meet the Queen at
Buckingham Palace. In 2021, marking a century since Milne bought the
stuffed toy from
Harrods department store for his son
Christopher Robin that would inspire Milne to create the character,
Winnie-the-Pooh: Once There Was a Bear, the first prequel to Milne's books and poetry about the bear, was authorised by the estates of Milne and Shepard. By November 1931, Pooh was a $50 million-a-year business. Slesinger marketed Pooh and his friends for more than 30 years, creating the first Pooh doll, record, board game, puzzle, US radio broadcast (on NBC), animation, and motion picture.
Red shirt Pooh The first time Pooh and his friends appeared in colour was 1932, when he was drawn by Slesinger in his now-familiar red shirt and featured on an
RCA Victor picture record.
Parker Brothers introduced ''A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh Game'' in 1933, again with Pooh in his red shirt. In the 1940s, Agnes Brush created the first plush dolls with Pooh in a shirt.
Disney exclusivity (1961–2021) After Slesinger's death in 1953, his wife,
Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, continued developing the character herself. In 1961, she licensed rights to
Walt Disney Productions in exchange for royalties in the first of two agreements between Stephen Slesinger, Inc., and Disney. The same year, A. A. Milne's widow, Daphne Milne, also licensed certain rights, including motion picture rights, to Disney. Since 1966, Disney has released numerous animated productions starring
its version of Winnie the Pooh and related characters, starting with the theatrical
featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. This was followed by
Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), and
Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974). These three featurettes were combined into a feature-length film,
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, in 1977. A fourth featurette,
Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore, was released in 1983. A new series of Winnie the Pooh theatrical feature-length films launched in the 2000s, with
The Tigger Movie (2000), ''
Piglet's Big Movie (2003), Pooh's Heffalump Movie (2005), and Winnie the Pooh'' (2011). Disney has also produced television series based on the franchise, including
Welcome to Pooh Corner (
Disney Channel, 1983–1986),
The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (
ABC, 1988–1991),
The Book of Pooh (
Playhouse Disney, 2001–2003), and
My Friends Tigger & Pooh (Playhouse Disney, 2007–2010). A. A. Milne's
U.S. copyright on the Winnie-the-Pooh character expired on 1 January 2022, as it had been 95 years since publication of the first story. The character has thus entered the
public domain in the United States and Disney no longer holds exclusive rights there. Independent filmmaker
Rhys Frake-Waterfield capitalized on this shortly thereafter by producing a horror film titled
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. The
UK copyright will expire on 1 January 2027, the first day of a Gregorian calendrical year which is at least 70 years, but not more than 71 years, after Milne's death.
Playdate with Winnie the Pooh, an animated series of musical shorts by OddBot Inc. for
Disney Junior, became the first project from Disney to be released after the original book and characters became public domain.
Merchandising revenue dispute Pooh videos, soft toys, and other merchandise generate substantial annual revenues for Disney. The size of Pooh stuffed toys ranges from
Beanie and miniature to human-sized. In addition to the stylised Disney Pooh, Disney markets Classic Pooh merchandise which more closely resembles E. H. Shepard's illustrations. In 1991, Stephen Slesinger, Inc., filed a lawsuit against Disney which alleged that Disney had breached their 1983 agreement by again failing to accurately report revenue from Winnie the Pooh sales. Under this agreement, Disney was to retain approximately 98% of gross worldwide revenues while the remaining 2% was to be paid to Slesinger. In addition, the suit alleged that Disney had failed to pay required royalties on all commercial exploitation of the product name. Though the Disney corporation was sanctioned by a judge for destroying forty boxes of evidentiary documents, After a series of legal hearings, Judge
Florence-Marie Cooper of the US District Court in California found in favour of Stephen Slesinger, Inc., as did the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On 26 June 2006, the
US Supreme Court refused to hear the case, sustaining the ruling and ensuring the defeat of the suit. On 19 February 2007, Disney lost a court case in Los Angeles which ruled their "misguided claims" to dispute the licensing agreements with Slesinger, Inc., were unjustified, but a federal ruling of 28 September 2009, again from Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, determined that the Slesinger family had granted all trademarks and copyrights to Disney, although Disney must pay royalties for all future use of the characters. Both parties expressed satisfaction with the outcome. == Other adaptations ==