The creator of
Pooh was
Alan Alexander Milne,
or better known as A.A. Milne. A.A. Milne
was born in 1882 and wrote four Pooh books. The first book, Winnie-The-Pooh,
was published
October 14th, 1926.
Other Pooh books were
The House at Pooh Corner, When We
Were Very Young, and Now We Are Six.
The teddy bear that Christopher Robin Milne
received for his first birthday did not start out with the name of Winnie
the Pooh. Pooh originally belonged to a swan, as can be seen in a poem
from When We Were Very Young. And Winnie originally came from a bear at
the London Zoo that Christopher Robin used to play with. In Winnie-the-Pooh,
A. A. Milne wrote that the name, Winnie, was based on a polar bear. Whether
a slip of the pen, or just a memory lapse, that bear at the zoo was not
a polar bear, but an American black bear. The bear was Christopher Robin's
inspiration for calling his own teddy bear Winnie.Winnie-the-Pooh is in-arguably
the most famous bear in the world, which has been translated into
thirty-three languages.
The popularity of Winnie-the-Pooh and
his friends gained a great deal in the 1960s. On June 16, 1961, Walt Disney
purchased the film rights to the Pooh stories from Mrs. Daphne Milne. The
first film of them all, Winnie-the-Pooh and the Honey Tree, appeared
in 1966, being twenty-six minutes. The general public preview in America
was high, but the British reaction was not as favorable. Disney had replaced
Piglet with a gopher, and there was more frustration evident because of
the characters' Mid-West accent.
Disney consented to re-dub the part
of Christopher Robin with a British accent, and Piglet appeared in the
next film, Winnie
the Pooh and the Blustery Day, and in subsequent films. More and more,
Pooh and his friends are existing apart from the original books. Disney,
as mentioned above, bought the non-book rights of the characters in 1961,
and along with their film shorts, have recently produced "The New Adventures
of Winnie the Pooh." This cartoon series had developed new characters,
settings, and story lines apart from the original books. Another example
of this is shown in Benjamin Hoff's books, The Tao of Pooh (1982) and The
Te of Piglet (1992), when Hoff replaces Milne as the author and has discussions
with these two characters.
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