Winnie-the-Pooh Turns 100, and He Was Famous Before His Own Book

A stuffed bear that once belonged to a little boy in London turned 100 this week. He is holding up better than most of us hold up at 40.

The book Winnie-the-Pooh was published on Oct. 14, 1926, by Methuen in London and Dutton in the United States. A.A. Milne wrote it, and E.H. Shepard drew the pictures.²³ It was an immediate success, and it is still one of the best-loved children's books around.⁴

The original book held 10 stories about friendship, curiosity, misunderstandings and the small adventures of everyday life. That's also a fair summary of every family reunion ever held.³ Those pages introduced readers to Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, Owl, Kanga, Roo and Christopher Robin, a cast that has now outlasted the typewriter.³

Pooh's Résumé Started Before His Big Break

Here's the twist for trivia night. The 1926 book was not Pooh's first public appearance.

He showed up two years earlier in When We Were Very Young, a 1924 book of verse. The 1926 book was Milne and Shepard's first collection of stories about the bear.⁵⁴ Then, on Christmas Eve 1925, the London Evening News ran a story called "The Wrong Sort of Bees." It later became the book's first chapter.⁶

So Pooh had a newspaper feature before he had a book of his own. Most authors would trade a kidney for that kind of publicity.

Winnie-the-Pooh was the second of four Pooh books. Now We Are Six came in 1927, and The House at Pooh Corner followed in 1928 and introduced Tigger.⁴ That means the most energetic character in the series showed up last. (Anyone who has ever thrown a kid's birthday party knows that's exactly how it works.)

The Real Toys Behind the Hundred-Year Hit

Milne didn't have to invent his characters from scratch. He based them on the toys belonging to his son, Christopher Robin.⁷

Eeyore began life as a Christmas present, a festive origin he has never once seemed excited about. Kanga, Roo and Tigger were bought at Harrods, the famous London department store.⁷ That gives them the fanciest shopping receipt in children's literature.

The book sold 35,000 copies in Britain and more than 150,000 in the United States, according to a 2016 AFP report. By then it had also been translated into more than 50 languages.⁷ Those numbers are a decade old, so the real totals are anyone's guess, but it is safe to say the bear has gotten around.

A Century of Pooh Gets a Proper Party

The 100th anniversary is being celebrated with new books, commemorative products and Disney anniversary events.²

New titles include DK's The Disney Winnie the Pooh Book: A Centenary Celebration and How a Bear Became a Book, a picture book by Annette Bay Pimentel and Faith Pray that NPR covered in August.⁸⁵ CBS News marked the date by reposting a 2012 "Sunday Morning" Almanac segment in which Charles Osgood traced the bear's origins and staying power.¹

Libraries are getting in on it too. The New York Public Library is staging a display of original illustrations.⁹ The Johnson County Library in Kansas has a birthday party set for Oct. 17.⁸

That's three days after the actual birthday. At 100, a bear is allowed to show up a little late to his own party.