Winnie became the mascot of the Brigade and went
to Britain with the unit. When the Brigade was posted to the battlefields
of France,
Lt. Colebourn took Winnie to the London Zoo for a long loan. Formally Colebourn
presented the London Zoo with Winnie in December 1919 where it became a
popular attraction and lived until 1934.
The bear was also very popular by Christopher Robin, son of author A.A.
Milne.
It was his favorite at the zoo, and he often spent time inside the cage
with it. The
bear was Christopher Robin's inspiration for calling his own teddy bear
Winnie.....Winnie the Pooh (this teddy bear started out with the name of
Edward
Bear). The name of Pooh originally belonged to a swan, as can be seen in
a poem
from Milne's When We Were Very Young.
A.A. Milne 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!
The Pooh-books had also been favourites of Walt
Disney's daughters and it inspired Disney to bring Pooh to
film in 1966. In 1977 'the Many Adventures of Winnie the
Pooh', the first feature-length animated film of Pooh was
released. In 1993, the Walt Disney Company
acknowledged that Pooh Bear is second only to Mickey
Mouse in their portfolio of the most-loved and trusted
characters known to millions of people all the world over.
By 1996, after the second release of 'the Many Adventures of Winnie the
Pooh',
the Bear of Very Little Brain had proved to be more popular than any other
Disney
character. In 1997, thirty years after the release of 'the Many Adventures
of Winnie
the Pooh', Disney released 'Pooh's Grand Adventure', picking up where Disney's
22nd Masterpiece left off.