Who wrote Winnie the Pooh? Who wrote Winnie the Pooh
Winnie the Pooh is still considered one of the most famous and beloved characters in children's literature. Readers met him on Christmas Eve in 1925, when the first chapter of the tale was published in a London newspaper. Alana Alexandra Milne: "The chapter in which we first meet Winnie the Pooh and the bees." Readers liked the story so much that a year later the first book was published about the adventures of a bear cub with sawdust in his head, which was called “Winnie the Pooh.” It was followed by another one called “House on Poohovaya Edge”. AiF.ru tells how the idea of creating the famous fairy tale came about, and why Milne began to hate his hero over the years.
Alan Milne, Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh. 1928 Photo from the British National Portrait Gallery Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Howard Coster
Favorite toys
The fairy tale “Winnie the Pooh” owes its appearance to Milne's son Christopher Robin, which inspired the writer to create it.
“Every child has a favorite toy, and the child who is alone in the family especially needs it,” wrote the matured Christopher. For him, such a toy was a teddy bear, which he named Winnie the Pooh. And although over the years more and more of Christopher's favorite toys were added to the shelf - after Winnie, a donkey without a tail, Eeyore, appeared, the neighbors gave the boy a piglet, Piglet, and his parents bought Kanga with baby Roo and Tigger - the boy did not part with his “first-born”.
His father told Christopher bedtime stories, in which the main character was always a club-footed fidget. The kid really enjoyed playing at home plays with plush toys, in which all family members took part. The plots of the performances formed the basis of Milne’s books, and the writer himself always said: “Actually, I didn’t invent anything, I just had to describe.”
Authentic Christopher Robin toys: (from bottom, clockwise): Tigger, Kanga, Pooh, Eeyore and Piglet. New York Public Library. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
It is interesting that Milne introduced readers to the fairy tale heroes in the same order in which his son’s toys appeared. But among the fairy-tale animals there are two characters that were not actually on Christopher’s toy shelf: the writer invented the Owl and the Rabbit himself. An attentive reader may notice that in the original illustrations of the book the image of these heroes is significantly different, and it is no coincidence that the Rabbit once says to the Owl: “Only you and I have brains. The rest have sawdust."
Tale from life
Not only were the plots and characters of “Winnie the Pooh” taken by the writer from life, even the forest in which the fairy tale took place was real. In the book, the forest is called Wonderful, but in fact it was the most ordinary Ashdown forest, not far from which the writer purchased a farm. In Ashdown you can find the six pines described in the fairy tale, a stream and even a thistle thicket into which Winnie once fell. Moreover, it is no coincidence that the action of the book often takes place in hollows and on tree branches: the writer’s son loved to climb trees and play there with his teddy bear.
By the way, the name of the bear itself also has an interesting story. Christopher named his favorite toy after a female bear named Winnipeg (Winnie), who was kept in the London Zoo in the 1920s. The boy met her at the age of four and immediately managed to make friends. The American black bear came to the UK from the Winnipeg area as the live mascot of the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps. The bear lived in Britain for more than 10 years (she died on May 12, 1934), and in 1981, 61-year-old Christopher unveiled a life-size monument to her at the London Zoo.
In the paws of a teddy bear
One can safely consider him to be another author of the adventures of a teddy bear. artist Ernest Shepard, who drew the original illustrations for the first edition. The cartoonist, who lived for 96 years, left behind a huge amount of work, but the illustrations for Winnie the Pooh eclipsed his entire legacy. The same fate awaited Milne himself, who years later managed to hate his fairy-tale hero for this.
Milne began as an “adult” writer, but after “Winnie the Pooh,” readers did not take his books seriously: everyone expected the continuation of the adventures of the unlucky honey lover. But Christopher grew up, and the author did not want to write fairy tales for other kids. He did not consider himself exclusively a children's writer, but at the same time maintained that he wrote for children with the same responsibility as for adults.
Even Christopher "Winnie the Pooh" brought a lot of trouble. At school, he was bullied by classmates who teased him with quotes from his father’s books, and in his old age, those around him continued to perceive Christopher as “the boy from Pooh Edge.”
Winnie the Pooh. Illustration by artist Ernest Shepard. Photo:
More than one generation of our children grew up watching Soviet cartoons, and for the most part they became quite worthy people. For those born in the sixties, Winnie the Pooh was “one of our own,” domestic, he talked, sang and reasoned like so many citizens. This work of the Soyuzmultfilm studio is still very popular today, although, of course, in terms of the brightness of the image and the intensity of the events occurring on the screen, it is inferior to foreign films created by computers and designers from all over the world. Somehow, questions about who wrote “Winnie the Pooh” and how our little bear differs from Disney’s were left aside.
Author and creator
In Great Britain there once lived a prominent playwright, a happy father, a wonderful family man and a wealthy man, whose name was Alan Alexander Milne. In 1921, he gave his son a teddy bear for his first birthday. The event is the most ordinary - both in England and in other countries, many dads give gifts to their children. But a talented person will find a reason to create a work even looking at such an ordinary toy, and this happened in 1926, when the son grew up a little. Five years later, a book was published, which was a collection of previously told and later written short stories, which his father composed on the go and used instead of fairy tales while raising little Christopher. Here is the answer to the question of who wrote "Winnie the Pooh". The author is the famous British writer A. A. Milne. Today, his other works are rarely remembered, but the stories about the adventures of the teddy bear have survived decades.
Characters and images
The main character received his name in honor of the living symbol of the veterinary corps of the Canadian Army, the Winnipeg bear, who came from the province of the same name. Almost all the characters in the story existed in real life in the form of toys (Eeyore without a tail, torn off somehow by Christopher, Piglet, Kanga, Little Roo and Tigger), only Rabbit and Owl were invented. The Wood (Wonderful, also known as the Hundred Acre Wood) also exists, it was acquired by Milne in East Sussex, although its area is not one hundred, but five hundred acres. In the twenties, the book immediately found its grateful readers, and their main question was not who wrote “Winnie the Pooh,” but whether there would be sequels. In 1928, the next, second and, alas, last book with these characters, “The House on Pooh Edge”, was published, just like the first, which consisted of ten chapters.
By the way, although Milne composed stories for his son, he dedicated them to his mother and his wife Daphne. But the life of the beloved character did not end there, he is mentioned in two more poetry collections, but the real fame around the watering bear cub began to shine after the sale of the rights to the film adaptation of the work to Disney in 1961. The animated stories came one after another, and had almost no relation to the original source. Nobody even remembered who wrote “Winnie the Pooh”, why and for whom. The images of the characters were more important, and they were exploited in the best traditions of assembly line production.
Our Vinny
Soviet Vinnie also does not quite correspond to the image created by Milne. Moreover, it has significant differences with the teddy bear created by Boris Zakhoder, who translated the book from English in the late fifties, treated this work quite creatively, and made significant changes to the original text. Therefore, if we have in mind the character of the Soviet three-part cartoon, then it would not be out of place to ask the question of who wrote “Winnie the Pooh”. The Russian bear cub was “composed”, as was customary in the USSR, collectively. Screenwriter B. Zakhoder, director F. Khitruk, artists and performers who voiced the soundtrack (E. Leonov, I. Savina, E. Garin) contributed. The creative team, unfortunately, did not have a common opinion on the image being created, which led to the premature closure of the project (many episodes were planned). It turned out very well, and even in the USA, the homeland of Walt Disney, there is an opinion that our cartoon is better than the American one, and the main character is livelier and more interesting.
Is it really that important today who wrote “Winnie the Pooh”? The main thing is that Alan Milne managed to create a certain image that became the basis for such diverse interpretations, inspired other masters and gave joy to children of the third millennium.
Winnie the Pooh is one of the most popular characters in Russian animation. He doesn't look like the one Disney created from Alan Milne's own drawings. And the cartoon was shot by Fyodor Khitruk, as they say, based on the book. But, nevertheless, today it seems that the real Winnie the Pooh is just like that. Fat and a little greedy, composing chants and screams. At Soyuzmultfilm he is considered almost a national hero.
The book "Winnie the Pooh and the rest", translated into Russian by the famous writer Boris Zakhoder, was signed for publication on July 13, 1960, and the first cartoon about Winnie the Pooh was released in 1969.
- If I'm scratching my head, it doesn't matter,
There's sawdust in my head, yes, yes, yes!
Today, animators admit that creating this image was very difficult for them. Pooh was invented by everyone together - artists, directors, director and voice actor Evgeniy Leonov. Some features, such as a clumsy gait when the upper paw goes in the same direction as the lower one, were acquired by Pooh due to technical errors by the animators.
Vladimir Zuikov, artist: “And the crushed ear? I thought it was better this way. And Fyodor Savelyevich said that it was like that because Pooh sleeps on it...”
Although Boris Zakhoder did not internally agree with Fyodor Khitruk, he did not interfere in the artist’s work. And it was thanks to the cartoon that the peak of the book’s popularity came. Zakhoder himself, often laughing, called the cartoon character “a galloping and jumping potato.” But at the same time, he noted that this is the best embodiment of the image of Pooh in the entire world of animation. 
“Khitruk greatly distorted the image of what he had planned. The result was such a cheerful character, although he should be thoughtful and dreamy,” said Galina Zakhoder, the writer’s widow, adding that the writer and the artist had different tasks. Initially, it was planned to shoot 20 episodes of the cartoon about Winnie the Pooh, but the creative relationship between Zakhoder and Khitruk ended quite quickly. In 1972, the last episode about the bear cub was released - “Winnie the Pooh and the Day of Worries.”
Resembling the fat teddy bear that every child has, both children and adults like the Russian Winnie the Pooh more than the Western version, artists are sure. At Soyuzmultfilm they say that Milne simply made up Winnie the Pooh. And they created this bear cub here. The way three generations of domestic viewers have already loved him.
"Winnie the Pooh"
Director: F. Khitruk
Composer: M. Weinberg
The roles were voiced by: Winnie the Pooh - E. Leonov; Piglet - I. Savvina; From the author - V. Osenev
Soyuzmultfilm, 1969
Chapter 1, in which we meet Winnie the Pooh, as well as several suspicious bees.
- This is no accident...
- I am a cloud-cloud-cloud, and not a bear at all...
- Looks like it's starting to rain...
- I understand, these are the wrong bees! And they make the wrong honey!
"Winnie the Pooh is coming to visit"
Script writers: B. Zakhoder, F. Khitruk
Director: F. Khitruk
Composer: M. Weinberg
Production designers: V. Zuikov, E. Nazarov
The roles were voiced by: Winnie the Pooh - E. Leonov; Piglet - I. Savvina; Rabbit - A. Shchukin; From the author - V. Osenev
Soyuzmultfilm, 1971
Chapter 2, in which Winnie the Pooh went to visit and found himself in a hopeless situation.
- Whoever goes to visit in the morning acts wisely!
-As far as I understand, a hole is a hole.
- Yeah!
- And the hole is the Rabbit.
- Yeah!
- A rabbit is suitable company.
- What is a suitable company?
- And a suitable company is a company where you can always refresh yourself with something!
- Hello, Rabbit! We happened to be walking past and thought - shouldn't we stop by to see the Rabbit?
- Would you like honey or condensed milk?
- Both. And you can do it without bread.
- Well, if you don't want anything else...
- Is there anything else?
-Are you in a hurry?
- No, I’m completely free until Friday. 
- Everything is clear: he’s stuck!
- This is all because someone’s doors are too narrow!
- No! All because someone eats too much!
... And no one knew what the Rabbit thought. Because he was very well-mannered.
"Winnie the Pooh and Care Day"
Script writers: B. Zakhoder, F. Khitruk
Directors: F. Khitruk, G. Sokolsky
Composer: M. Weinberg
Production designers: V. Zuikov, E. Nazarov
The roles were voiced by: Winnie the Pooh - E. Leonov; Piglet - I. Savvina; Donkey Eeyore - E. Garin; Owl - Z. Maryshkina; From the author - V. Osenev
Soyuzmultfilm, 1972
Chapter 3, in which Eeyore celebrates his birthday and receives three useful gifts at once.
- A heartbreaking sight...
- I'll give him a pot of honey. This will comfort him.
- My spelling is poor. It's good, but for some reason it's lame.
- If you give Eeyore this lace for his birthday, he will be simply happy!
Piglet was so excited about how happy Eeyore would be with his gift that he didn’t even look at his feet...
- Excuse me, I would like to know what color it was when it was a ball?
- Green.
- Wow, my favorite color. What size was it?
- Almost from me...
- Just think, my favorite size... 
- In... and out!
It turns out great!
- I want to give you this lace without charge, that is, for free!
There are many versions, but there is no definitive answer, who wrote Winnie the Pooh, a fairy tale about a funny little bear. The English original of the book was translated by many writers from different countries, and everyone considered it an honor to help children and their fellow citizens learn more about the life of the hero of this fairy tale. For example, in Poland, one of the first was the translation of the sister of the great poet Julian Tuwim, Irene. There are also a large number of translations into Russian, but the translation by Boris Zakhoder, which was published in 1960, is still considered the most classic.
Birth story
Everyone's favorite main character has two birthdays. He celebrated the first in August 1921, when he was given to a small child - Christopher Robin; on this day the baby celebrated his first birthday. At that moment, writer Alan Alexander Milne did not yet know that this plush miracle would eventually become the main character of his book. He celebrated his second birthday (official) in October 1926, when the first edition of the book about a cheerful bear and his friends was published, which written by Allan Alexander Milne.
The mystery of the name
Many have read the book and watched cartoons about this cheerful and funny bear, but most people do not know that he got his name in honor of the Winnipeg she-bear. The bear was kept at the London Zoo back in the early 20s of the twentieth century. She got there from the Canadian Army Corps; in those days, the bear was a symbol of the army. After the end of the war, the bear remained to live in the capital of England, delighting children and adults at the zoo.
In 1924, the writer Milne took his son to the zoo for the first time to see a bear. He liked her madly and Christopher Robin that same day named his favorite teddy bear Winnie. Over time, Christopher Robin, already aged, in 1981, will unveil a monument to the bear at the London Zoo.
First illustration
The very first person to illustrate the funny Winnie the Pooh was a former army colleague during the First World War and a colleague of Alan Milne in one of the magazines, artist E. Shepard. The artist depicted one of the characters from the writer's real son, and Winnie the Pooh from the child's favorite toy, a bear. The artist became very famous and popular, at first he was terribly happy, but then he was disappointed, since the popularity of this illustration overshadowed all his other works. One of the first images, the Russian version of the book, was made by the artist Alisa Poret, but the illustration of Eduard Nazarov, who portrayed Winnie the Pooh in everyone’s favorite animated film, gained great popularity and fame.
After Boris Zakhoder translated the book from the original version, our Soviet Winnie the Pooh was much different from Milne the bear. The author of the new version of the book, Boris Zakhoder, when translating the book, made what seemed to him the best changes to the original text and they were very significant. All Soviet children liked the screams and chants that Winnie the Pooh said and they also repeated them in unison.
The film adaptations of the book remain a separate story. The well-known film studio Disney, in the West, made a number of animated films about the bear cub, but Christopher Robin did not like them very much. But the animated version of Fyodor Khitruk, which was made back in the Soviet Union, with incredible dubbing, where the main characters speak in the voices of E. Leonov, I. Savina and E. Garin, became not only popular, but is also in demand among children to this day throughout the former Soviet Union.
Unfortunately, the creative team of screenwriters and directors did not have a whole and unified opinion on what the image of the main character should be, and after the creation of three episodes, the project was closed. Now, even in the West, there is an opinion that our version of the animated film turned out much better than the American creation.
Winnie the Pooh is a character from Alan Milne's book, a teddy bear that has become incredibly popular all over the world. In the USSR, Winnie the Pooh won the hearts of children after the release of stories about a restless bear cub retold by Boris Zakhoder, and then after the release of the cartoon “Winnie the Pooh and All-All-All.” Today, Winnie the Pooh has long gone beyond the pages of books and screens - Winnie the Pooh has become a unique brand, one of the best-selling plush toys in the world and simply a favorite of children and their parents.
Winnie-the-Pooh is a figment of the imagination of the English writer Alan A. Milne. The children's book about the bear was inspired by his little son Christopher Robin and his favorite toys - a teddy bear named Winnie the Pooh, a pig and a donkey with a torn off tail. By the way, the somewhat strange name for the bear cub was made up of two names - the Winnipeg bear (Winnie) from the London Zoo and a swan named Pooh, who lived with the writer’s friends.
Surprisingly, in the book the story about the bear cub is told to the boy by his father, while in real life Christopher Robin read his father’s books when he was almost an adult, although Milne wrote them when his son was 5-7 years old. This happened because Milne himself never considered himself a great writer and preferred to raise his son on the books of other, in his opinion, more deserving children's writers. The irony was that at the same time the “greats” were raising their children on Milne's books.
Be that as it may, Winnie the Pooh quickly won the hearts of the children. He was a naive and good-natured bear, quite modest and even shy. By the way, the original book does not say that “there is sawdust in his head” - this already appeared in Zakhoder’s translation. By the way, in the book Milna hara
The character of Winnie the Pooh depended entirely on how his owner wanted him to be. Winnie the Pooh's birthday is either August 21, 1921 (the day Milne's son turned one year old), or October 14, 1926, when the first book about Winnie the Pooh was published.
By the way, today a teddy bear that belonged to Christopher Robin, the same “original” Winnie the Pooh, is exhibited in the children's room of the New York Library.
A huge boost to the popularity of Winnie the Pooh, without a doubt, was given by Disney cartoons, the first of which came out in the early 1960s.
In the USSR, the first cartoon about a bear named Winnie the Pooh was released in 1969. It’s strange, but this already established and completely formed character suddenly acquired a completely new image in a distant Soviet country, and the image is strong, unique in its own way and, on the whole, very far from the original. By the way, Boris Zakhoder always insisted that he did not translate, but retold Alan Milne’s book, which is why the image of “our” Winnie the Pooh is so far from English.
So, “our” Winnie the Pooh doesn’t even look like “their” Winnie the Pooh. Small, plump, even round, the “Soviet” Winnie the Pooh looks completely different from the original, which was more reminiscent of an ordinary teddy bear. By the way, very strong
The image of “our” Winnie the Pooh was strengthened by Evgeniy Leonov, who voiced him, whose voice forever became “the voice of Winnie the Pooh” for all of us. The cartoon was created by the wonderful cartoon director Fyodor Khitruk (he later received the State Prize for this work).
Speaking about the character of “our” Winnie the Pooh, we can immediately say that Winnie the Pooh is a bear-poet, a bear-thinker. He easily accepted the fact that there was sawdust in his head, was not at all puzzled by this and continued to do what he loved most. And he loves to eat. It seems that Winnie the Pooh is slow-witted, this is especially noticeable in some dialogues, when he openly “freezes” and answers abruptly and out of place. In fact, Winnie the Pooh constantly has an internal thought process that is known only to him. There is reason to believe that all his time he thinks deeply about where he can get honey or something tasty.
He never reveals his emotions, Winnie the Pooh's face is impenetrable, his thoughts are inaccessible. At the same time, we see that he is an ignorant, but a charming ignoramus. Winnie the Pooh is not burdened with any good manners - this is especially noticeable when he smells nearby food. Winnie the Pooh in the “Soviet” version turned out to be surprisingly stylish and complete. Etc
This cartoon itself is quite simple in animation.
It remains a mystery - why exactly did Soviet children and their parents fall in love with Winnie the Pooh? After all, Winnie the Pooh was not a “hero” at all - he did not save his friends, did not defeat evil, and in general “hanged out” on the screen quite uselessly, trying to find something tasty. However, he was and is loved by several generations of Russians. Literally every phrase from cartoons ended up in quotation books. The popularity of Winnie the Pooh can be judged by the number of jokes about him.
So, Winnie the Pooh, as we, Russian readers and viewers know him, is a rather selfish but cute fat bear. He is not burdened with good manners, but he definitely has charisma - all animals willingly make contact with him. On occasion, he can help someone, but only if it does not interfere with his plans. A lover of food, especially sweets, he spends his days most likely thinking about food. And although he is hardly capable of serious discoveries, he lives as a poet and thinker - in his “head full of sawdust” there is a constant thought process, invisible to the audience, but occupying him entirely.
We can only guess whether Winnie the Pooh is happy, because in general he is almost autistic, completely incomprehensible, but incredibly cute and attractive
