Once there was a bear: Pooh’s back story starts with trip to Harrods
EVERY superhero needs an origin story. Now Winnie-the-pooh has one, too.
The estates of AA Milne and his illustrator, EH Shepard, have authorised a prequel exploring the famous bear’s beginnings.
The new book, Winnie-the-pooh: Once There Was a Bear will draw on real history. It will start with the day that Pooh was purchased from Harrods for the infant Christopher Robin, and the first stories in the collection will be set in Mallord Street, Chelsea, where Eeyore and Piglet were among the toys.
Readers will encounter the young Christopher Robin, previously glimpsed in Milne’s poetry collections, When We Were Young and Now We Are Six.
Originally, the little boy named his teddy “Edward”. But he renamed it “Winnie” after Winnipeg, a Canadian black bear that he and his father would often visit at London Zoo.
Jane Riordan, the author of the new book, has invented an encounter between Pooh and Winnipeg. “In the story, Pooh gets a little bit jealous because he thinks there should only be one bear with that name,” she said.
“In another story they visit the Natural History Museum, and I used a little bit of creative licence because we don’t know if they did that in real life.
“But we had the idea to see what happens in the ‘before stories’ because there’s quite a lot we know about the real Christopher Robin’s life in London. So we thought it would be really nice to weave that into a prequel.”
In the later chapters the family move to the country and explore the Hundred Acre Wood, where Riordan has included characters such as Rabbit and Owl. The book will be published in September to mark the 95th anniversary of the release of Milne’s original stories. It will carry illustrations by Mark Burgess, in the style of Shepard’s.
Pooh regularly appears in lists of the nation’s favourite literary characters, and the books are still bestsellers.
Explaining their appeal, Riordan said: “The wonderful thing about Winniethe-pooh is that there are no adults. It’s this incredibly free, wild existence and I think that’s something that always resonated with children and perhaps does now more than ever when children have been stuck inside. We rarely let them out by themselves, certainly not into woods, so there’s something very freeing about reading these stories. They have a real sense of adventure.”
And the readers are not always children. “There is so much in the books that resonates with adults, and they’re actually a bit tricky to read for anyone under the age of six. They’re quite sophisticated, and it’s often adults more than children who love to discover them.”
Trustees of the Milne and Shepard estates were consulted about the stories. Riordan said: “The designer tells me that, overall, the trustees were delighted with Mark’s illustrations but they did ask for small amendments – one being to make Pooh a little stouter.
“They were also very keen for us to feature Piglet’s arrival in the London nursery. I imagined him squeezed through the letterbox, which perhaps explains his small size.” She has tried to stick as closely as possible to the characters created by Milne. “It is such a big responsibility, and Milne’s voice is so distinct. It was a huge thing to live up to.
“But I think when you’ve read the books as many times as I have, the voices just sort of sit in your head. There were times when I could hear the characters chatting away and I had to say, ‘You need to shush.’”
There’s going to be a Winnie-the-pooh prequel. Prequels are dangerous. It might be tempting to contrive one to Fawlty Towers or to ET, but the feeling in the bones is that they are best left be. A A Milne’s stories have suffered from the Disney film treatment, but now the writer Jane Riordan and illustrator Mark Burgess will be more respectful of the originals, to judge from their Pooh story in 2016 for the Queen’s 90th birthday. But it can’t be the real thing. The new book also features Harrods, where Milne’s son’s bear was bought in 1921 – when it was very different from today’s store. As for Milne, he found it hard to accept the eclipse of his other work by the four books about Pooh, whom he had invented “little thinking / All my years of pen-and-inking / Would be almost lost among /Those four trifles for the young”.