A Bear Called Winnie-the-Pooh (Published on October 14, 1926)

100 Years of Adventures

On 14 October 2026, we celebrate a very special 100th birthday. Our birthday bear is friendly and steadfast, and though he is a little slow and naïve, he often comes up with clever ideas.

Our celebrity is also a talented poet and storyteller, and occasionally he even composes a song. Have I given you enough clues to guess our birthday bear’s identity?

Enough suspense already! Today, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of Winnie-the-Pooh, the lovable fictional teddy bear created by the English author A. A. Milne and brought to life by illustrator E. H. Shepard.   

From Winnipeg to the Hundred Acre Wood

Winnie-the-Pooh is actually a collection of stories about a good-natured honey-loving bear who lives in the Hundred Acre Wood, a fictional place modelled on Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England.

The lovable bear was inspired by a stuffed toy Milne bought for his son Christopher Robin, and by a bear named Winnie they visited at the London Zoo. Thus, Winnie-the-Pooh was essentially inspired by a real bear.

The bear story begins in Canada, where an officer of the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps named Harry Colebourn adopted an orphaned female bear cub in White River, Ontario. He named the cub Winnipeg, or Winnie for short, after the Canadian city of Winnipeg, where he was based.

Harry Colebourn and Winnie

Lopez/Lopez: “The Tummy Song”   

From Zoo to Literary Fame

When Colebourn’s regiment came to England, he brought Winnie with him, and she soon became the regiment’s unofficial mascot. When Colebourn left for the front, he placed Winnie at the London Zoo, and she quickly became a crowd favourite.

One of those visitors was Christopher Robin Milne, who was so taken with Winnie that he renamed his teddy bear after her. Originally, the name Pooh belonged to a swan that Christopher Robin visited and fed. And thus the fictional Winnie-the-Pooh was born.

A. A. Milne, 1920

The first collection of stories under the title “Winnie-the-Pooh” was published in 1926, and the sequel “The House at Pooh Corner” appeared in 1928. Since we have already met Winnie-the-Pooh, it’s now time to introduce Pooh’s companions in the forest.

Winnie-the-Pooh, Evening News

Lopez/Lopez: “A Very Important Thing to Do” 

Meet the Gang

Of course, Christopher Robin is the boy who shares his name with Milne’s son. He is the benign master of the forest, and the animals turn to him when a problem gets too big for them.

He leads their expedition to the North Pole, and when Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit’s doorway, Christopher reads to him for over a week until Pooh has grown thin enough to escape through the doorway.

And then there is the old and grey donkey “Eeyore,” a kind but always self-deprecating creature. Odd mishaps seem to follow him around, as his missing tail is found at the Owl’s house, and Pooh and Piglet accidentally dismantle his stick house.

The original Winnie-the-Pooh toys

One of Pooh’s closest friends is “Piglet,” a small and often nervous creature who is fiercely loyal. One day, he sets out to give Eeyore a balloon for his birthday but accidentally pops it. Never mind, he still brings the remains as a gift. “Piglet” is very brave and even stands up to such creatures as a Heffalump, a creature resembling an elephant.  

Sherman/Sherman: “Like a Rather Blustery 

Wisdom, Bounce & Trouble

“Owl,” predictably, is an expert on almost everything, and always ready with a story or piece of advice. “Owl” lives in a splendid house at the Chestnuts, and even has a doorbell that rings inside.

The exuberant tiger bounding around on his tail first appeared in the 1928 book. Called “Tigger,” he joins many adventures and boasts that he can climb trees. Amusingly, he discovers that getting down is much harder than getting up.

Pooh (Shepard, 1928)

“Roo” is a baby kangaroo riding in his mother’s pouch, and it’s all fun and games. When “Roo” falls into a stream, he discovers that he can swim, and he even gets stuck up a tree with Tigger.

His mother “Kanga” is the fastest animal in the woods and is known for keeping track of every detail. She certainly is very practical and attentive, and later looks after Tigger as well.

“Rabbit” is an expert thinker who is convinced that he can solve almost any problem. When he gets annoyed at Tigger bouncing around, he leads him deep into the forest to disorient him, but in the end, it is “Rabbit” who loses his way.    

A Few Simple Lines

And thus, the stage is set for “Winnie-the-Pooh” to get himself into all kinds of sticky situations. The 1926 book contains 10 chapters that recount his various adventures. Milne insisted that Ernest H. Shepard illustrate these stories.

Shepard had long been working as a book illustrator, and he was also a full-time cartoonist at Punch, focusing on political cartoons. He also collaborated with Milne on the publication of When We Were Very Young in 1924.

His illustrations were always inspired by life itself. He often carried a sketchbook and observed everything from landscapes to children’s toys. As such, his drawings for “Winnie-the-Pooh” are delightfully light and natural, with a few simple lines suggesting personality and environment.   

Pooh Goes to Hollywood

Milne quickly understood that Shepard’s contribution made the books a great success, and Shepard received a share of the royalties. As a result, “Winnie-the-Pooh” became a huge success and the book was translated into countless languages.

Walt Disney acquired the screen rights to Milne’s Pooh stories in 1961, and the character made his Disney animated debut in the 1966 featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. Originally, the screen characters were based on Shepard’s illustrations, but were subsequently adapted. Interestingly, Shepard called the Disney animation a travesty in 1966.

Two more short features followed, and all three were later combined into a feature-length animation titled The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1977. Yet, living with the resounding success of Winnie-the-Pooh proved difficult for the people behind it. A. A. Milne was frustrated that his bear story overshadowed his plays, novels, and essays.  

May His Songs Never End

Illustrator Ernest H. Shepard developed a similar resentment as his Pooh drawings became more famous than the rest of his work. And Christopher Robin Milne was mercilessly teased by his classmates over his fictional counterpart. As an adult, he tried to distance himself completely from the character.

Of course, “Winnie-the-Pooh” is a rather musical bear, so the original Disney productions featured songs by the Sherman brothers. For the 2011 “Winnie the Pooh” film, Henry Jackman composed the background score, while new songs were written by the songwriting team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez.

Winnie the Pooh

A hundred years after Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared in print, he still gets stuck in doorways and stumbles into wild adventures with his friends. This jolly bear has made children and adults smile for 100 years and may his honey pots always be full and his songs never end.

Antonín Dvořák’s Cypresses Echoes of First Love

 by Hermione Lai  July 27th, 2026

The string quartets by Antonín Dvořák are a treasure trove of Bohemian spirit and deeply felt universal emotion. What started as eighteen love songs under the title Cypresses in 1865 became a string quartet cycle of twelve miniature movements twenty-two years later.

Composed during a period of youthful infatuation and romantic longing, Dvořák’s musical imagination gained new depth and tenderness in his arrangement for strings, sometimes referred to as The Echo of Songs.

Melodies once sung by a solitary voice suddenly bloom into animated conversations. Shall we have a listen?   

Where Longing Began

The origins of Cypresses date back to Dvořák’s student days in Prague. During his studies at the organ school, he met the composer, conductor, and choirmaster Karel Bendl. They struck up a close friendship, and young Dvořák was a frequent guest at the home of the wealthy Bendl family during the early 1860s.

Dvořák had free access to the Bendl household piano and to a considerable archive of sheet music. Giving piano lessons to supplement his income, he fell in love with his student Josefína Čermáková, the elder sister of his later wife Anna.

Josefína wasn’t much interested, and Dvořák eventually dedicated his first song cycle Cypresses, to “my good friend Karel Bendl, as a token of our friendship.”

Antonín Dvořák, 1868

Antonín Dvořák: Cypresses, “So many a heart is as though deaf”  

The Poet Behind Cypresses

The initial collection of lyrical and epic poems emerged from Dvořák’s attempt to find his voice as a composer. And for his love song, Cypresses, he drew on the poetry of Gustav Pfleger Moravský.

Moravský grew up in Prague and received a German-language education. However, during the Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire, he became more aware of his Czech nationality.

Eventually, Moravský was conversant in six languages, but a lung disease forced him to abandon regular studies. He found employment as a bank clerk, but found his work so monotonous and boring that he started travelling throughout Germany.

Gustav Pfleger Moravský, poet

Antonín Dvořák: Cypresses, “Nature lies peaceful in slumber and dreaming”   

Poems of Love and Longing

He had actually started to write poetry during his time at the bank, and he published his first collection of poetry titled Dumky in 1857. This collection was not very successful, but things changed with Cypresses in 1861.

It soon became a well-regarded book within the Czech National Revival, as the cypress tree carries a number of associations ranging from mourning and melancholy to death.

In fact, it is a larger collection of lyric and narrative verse, and Dvořák selected his texts from a subsection called “Songs.” The poetry features a young lover caught between rapture and despair.

Antonín Dvořák: Cypresses, “I know that My Love to Thee”   

The Language of Longing

In these poems, we find one of the most important genres of 19th-century song, the “Liebesbotschaft” (Love Message). These poems unfold as intimate monologues to an absent beloved.

Invariably, the poems deal with unrequited love, longing, and emotional distance, and nature as a mirror of emotions. We also find dreams and distant memories dealing with idealised femininity.

And a good number turn to landscapes, like nightly forests, mountains, and twilight imagery, as emotional extensions of the self. They present sentimental but deeply sincere emotions.      

Echoes Across Time

When Bendl looked over the original Dvořák setting, he wasn’t particularly excited. Apparently, he told the budding composer that the declamation was poor in many places. Within a year, Dvořák conceded with delight that Bendl’s statement was right on the money.

In 1887, Antonín wrote to his publishers, “These little compositions were originally 18 songs, four of which were published as Op. 2. I wrote them in 1865 and now, after 22 years, I have arranged them for string quartet under the title The Echo of Songs.”

Dvořák tellingly added, “Just imagine a young boy who is in love—that is the content of Cypresses.”  

Antonín Dvořák: Cypresses, “Here I gaze at that dear letter”   

A Second Life for First Love

Let’s not forget that Dvořák was at the height of his powers in 1887. He had completed his oratorio Saint Ludmila, commissioned by the Leeds Festival, just one year earlier. He also worked on a private commission for a Mass and the Terzetto, with the Piano Quintet also taking shape.

The early love songs had always been on Dvořák’s mind, as he revised four of them and published them in 1882. Eight other songs appeared in Berlin in January 1889 under the title Love Songs.

These twelve songs served as the basis for the string quartet version. Dvořák in no way altered their vocal essence, as the melodic expression is taken by the violins. The viola and cello, in turn, share the keyboard part.

Antonín Dvořák, 1882

Antonín Dvořák: Cypresses, No. 9 “Thou Only, Dear One”   

The Music of Remembering

The original songs are clearly recognizable in these string quartet arrangements, with melody lines, rhythm, and harmony basically unchanged. Dvořák changed some keys, and half of the songs are extended by repetition resulting from interchanges of materials to different instruments.

The twelve Cypresses for string quartet, as we know them today, were not published until 1957. Dvořák’s son-in-law had published ten of them in 1912. This set musically goes from contemplation of the fleeting nature of human love to increasingly ardent declarations of love.

It ends with a feeling of urgent questioning that alternates with answers of greater serenity.

It is a youthful collection of love letters preserved long after they had originally been written. In their string quartet version, they came back to life by combining simplicity of utterance with the accomplished technique of a mature composer.

In Cypresses, the mature composer looks back tenderly on the passions of youth. These melodies are still filled with nostalgia and longing, but they are now illuminated by memory and by experience. People say that you never forget your first love. You may leave your first love, but it never truly leaves you.