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A.A.
Milne saw the bear in the London Zoo and started to write
a series of books about Winnie the Pooh, his son Christopher
Robin, and their friends at 100-Aker-Wood. These other characters,
such as Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger, Kanga and Roo were also
based on stuffed animals belonging to Christopher Robin.
Other characters as Rabbit and Owl were based on animals
that lived, just like the swan Pooh, in the surrounding
area of Milne's country home Cotchford Farm in Ashdown Forest,
Sussex, on which 100-Aker-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'
in1928. 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 favourites 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
printed in more than 25 languages the world over!
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