On October 14, 1926, British author A.A. Milne publishes Winnie-the-Pooh, a children’s book about a bear of “very little brain” and his friends who live in the Hundred Acre Wood. Illustrated by E.H. Shepard, the story and its characters become global classics.
Milne drew inspiration from his son, Christopher Robin Milne, and the stuffed animals that filled his nursery. The author and his wife, Daphne, gave Christopher a teddy bear for his first birthday from Harrods department store. Eeyore, Piglet, Kanga and Tigger were also toys, while Christopher said in a 1976 BBC interview that Owl and Rabbit “were more like real animals.” The Ashdown Forest near the family’s Sussex home helped inspire the setting of the Hundred Acre Wood.
The name “Winnie” traces back to a black bear at the London Zoo. Lieutenant Harry Colebourn, a Canadian soldier and veterinarian, bought the bear for $20 during a train stop in White River, Ontario, in 1914. Colebourn named the cub “Winnipeg,” nicknamed “Winnie,” after the city where he lived. When he was deployed to France during World War I, he left Winnie at the London Zoo, where she became a favorite attraction. Christopher Milne was among the children who visited Winnie, later described in 1933 as “the tamest and best behaved bear” at the zoo. He renamed his first birthday gift “Winnie the Pooh,” with “Pooh” paying homage to a swan the boy fed.
