Pooh's Latin translation made the New York Times bestseller list
Alexander Lenard's Winnie ille Pu (1958) became, in 1960, the only Latin book ever to land on The New York Times Best Seller list. The honey-loving bear of Ashdown Forest had already conquered English nurseries—and was about to conquer Disney.
Winnie-the-Pooh (also Edward Bear or Pooh), created by A. A. Milne and illustrated by E. H. Shepard, first appeared by name in a story London's Evening News commissioned for Christmas Eve 1925. Story collections Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928) followed poems in When We Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are Six (1927). Adventures unfold in the Hundred Acre Wood, modeled on Ashdown Forest in East Sussex—Milne bought Cotchford Farm a mile north in 1925, and Christopher Milne later wrote that Pooh's forest and Ashdown are identical (Five Hundred Acre Wood became the fictional hundred). Original manuscripts rest in Trinity College, Cambridge's Wren Library.
Milne named the bear after his son Christopher Robin's Harrods teddy, bought in 1921—first Edward, then Winnie after a Canadian black bear at London Zoo, and Pooh after a holiday swan. That zoo bear had been bought for C$20 by Lieutenant Harry Colebourn. Shepard drew Growler, his own son's teddy, rather than Christopher's. Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, and Tigger entered from the boy's other toys; they traveled to Milne's U.S. publisher in 1947 and, since 1987, sit on display at the New York Public Library's Main Branch. Disney licensed film rights in 1961 from Milne's estate and Stephen Slesinger, Inc., dropping the hyphens as "Winnie the Pooh" for a major franchise.
Milne jokes that stiff raised arms after being dragged downstairs left Pooh blowing flies off his nose—hence the nickname. William Safire wondered about Gilbert and Sullivan's Pooh-Bah as a side influence. A Lorne McKean bronze of cub Winnie was unveiled at London Zoo in 1981 by Christopher Robin; her skull at the Hunterian shows chronic periodontitis. From Evening News Christmas tale to Latin bestseller and park meet-and-greets, the bear remains stuffed-toy literature's gentlest empire.
Source: Winnie-the-Pooh
