Now We Are 75

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the publication of Winnie-the-Pooh, join Amazon.co.uk on an "expotition" to find the origins and career highlights of the Bear of Very Little Brain.

AA Milne's son Christopher was given a teddy bear for his first birthday, whom he called Edward Bear but after he saw a black bear at London Zoo called Winnie when he was five-years-old, he renamed his bear after her. Winnie originally came from Winnipeg, Canada and was on permanent loan from a Canadian lieutenant who had given the bear to the zoo in 1914 for safekeeping during the First World War. The addition of "Pooh" originates from the name of a swan, who is mentioned in AA Milne's first children's book When We Were Very Young.

Christopher was given Eeyore as a Christmas present in 1921, when he was one-and-a-half and Piglet was a gift from a neighbour in Chelsea. Kanga and Roo appeared in the nursery in 1925 but Tigger did not join the menagerie until after Now We Are Six had been published. Thus only The House at Pooh Corner contains all the animals now well known and loved, including Owl, (or Wol), Rabbit and Rabbit's friends and relations.

The Milne family moved to Cotchford Farm in the Ashdown Forest area in East Sussex in 1926, the year Winnie-the-Pooh was first published. EH Shepard illustrated the Pooh books by sketching scenes near to AA Milne's home in Ashdown Forest. These included Posingford Bridge, the original "Poohsticks" bridge and Gill's Lap, known as Galleon's Lap in the books, as well as Roo's Sandpit, the North Pole and One Hundred Acre Wood. Shepard illustrated the books with line drawings and it wasn't until the 1970s that he coloured them in for new editions of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. 50 years after the first editions were published a new generation could enjoy Christopher Robin and friends in colour.

Perhaps surprisingly to some AA Milne fans, the author himself admired Walt Disney's work and saw it as an honour if his work was ever animated by the Disney company. In 1961 AA Milne's widow Daphne sold the film rights to Disney. The original stories were translated into film through a series of featurettes, as Pooh was less known in the USA than in the UK. Winnie-the-Pooh and the Honey-Tree was released in 1966; Winnie-the-Pooh and the Blustery Day won an Oscar in 1968 for Best Cartoon Short Subject; and Winnie-the-Pooh and Tigger Too was released in 1974. These three short animations were combined into Disney's 22nd feature-length animation in 1977 as The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh. Since then, though there has been one other short film based on AA Milne's stories, Disney has created its own films and cartoon series, effectively using only the characters and not the storylines. Winnie-the-Pooh's Grand Adventure continued the story from the first feature-length film and The Tigger Movie brought all from One Hundred Acre Wood into the 21st century.

The majority of Winnie-the-Pooh products live on as children's books and audio books but he has also made his mark in the adult book market, with such books as The Tao of Pooh, The Te of Piglet and Winnie-the-Pooh on Management and Problem Solving. The unusual but quirkily popular Winnie Ille Pu translated Pooh into Latin, while he has also encouraged children in educational software and PC and video games. Toys, from stuffed animals to Lego, allow Winnie-the-Pooh and all his friends come alive for children of any age.

Read Amazon.co.uk's buying guide to Pooh products.