Winnie the Pooh is probably the most well-known fictional bear in the world. Millions of copies of the book bearing his name as the title have been sold since it was first published by Mehuen on the 14th October 1926. It was subsequently translated into 22 languages. Walt Disney made three very successful cartoon films featuring the bear and his friends. Winnie the Pooh stories have even been used to explain the principles of Taoism and rather surprisingly, there is a street in Poland named after him. Winnie the Pooh started life as a real teddy bear, bought from the famous London store, Harrods, in 1921, by Dorothy Milne, wife of the author, Alan Alexander Milne, for their son Christopher Robin's first birthday.  Winnie the Pooh's original name was "Edward Bear". He first appeared in 1924, in A.A.Milne's anthology of poetry for children, When We Were Very Young. His name was later changed to Winnie-the-Pooh. The name "Winnie" came from an regiment from Winnipeg; "Pooh" was the name of Christopher's favourite swan.

The real Winnie-the-Pooh, on whom the stories were based, was an Alpha Farnell bear, bought in Harrods in 1921. When E.H.Shepard started working on the illustrations for the books he did not find the Farnell bear particularly inspiring, so he based his Pooh character on his son's bear, Growler, a 1906 Steiff.