
Contents
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A Brief History of Pooh A Brief History of Pooh
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A Brief History of Pooh Scholarship A Brief History of Pooh Scholarship
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Positioning Pooh Today Positioning Pooh Today
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Notes Notes
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Bibliography Bibliography
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Cite
Extract
A Brief History of Pooh
One hundred years ago, in August 1920, a baby boy was born whose name would soon become known throughout the length and breadth of the English-speaking world—and beyond (Connolly 1995, xiii). Christopher Robin Milne, known to his family as “Moon,” was the only child of A. A. Milne, a respected playwright, Punch columnist, and soon-to-be author of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.1 In the same year, a young Canadian bear named Winnie was settling into her new home in London Zoo. She had been donated to that institution in December 1919 by Canadian soldier Harry Colebourn, who had bought her from a trapper in 1914 for twenty dollars but was forced to leave her behind when his regiment departed England for the battlefields of Europe (Mattick 46–47). In 1920, a further piece of the puzzle that would later become the Winnie-the-Pooh canon was falling into place: production was underway on a small stuffed bear toy, one of many that would soon grace the shelves of Harrods Department Store in London. This bear would be purchased in 1921 as a birthday present for the one-year-old Billy Moon and would become one of his most beloved toys, as well as a muse for his literary father. Close comparison of pictures from the New York Public Library (New York Public Library n.d.) and from Harrods’ designer pages suggest that the bear was one of Harrods’ now-famous Steiff bears, originally conceived by designer Margarete Steiff in 1880, and redesigned and rereleased by Harrods and Steiff periodically ever since (Harrods n.d.). At this early point, boy, bear, and toy were yet to become acquainted; nevertheless—seemingly independent of the agency of the author who would later make them famous—all three were already contributing the Pooh phenomenon as we know it today. This culmination of disparate events would make 1920 one of the most momentous for the history of children’s literature.
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