Hear the Classic Winnie-the-Pooh Read by Author A.A. Milne in 1929

christopher-robinHere’s a rare record­ing from 1929 of the British author A.A. Milne read­ing a chap­ter of his beloved chil­dren’s book, Win­nie-the-Pooh. Milne was a pro­lif­ic writer of plays, nov­els and essays, but he was most wide­ly known–much to his chagrin–as the cre­ator of a sim­ple and good-natured lit­tle bear.

Pooh was inspired by his son Christo­pher Robin’s favorite ted­dy bear. In Mil­ne’s imag­i­na­tion, the stuffed bear comes alive and enters into lit­tle adven­tures (or one might say mis­ad­ven­tures) with Christo­pher Robin and his oth­er stuffed ani­mals. The name “Win­nie” was bor­rowed from a famous res­i­dent of the Lon­don Zoo: a black bear from Cana­da named for the city of Win­nipeg. The young Christo­pher Robin liked vis­it­ing Win­nie at the zoo. He also liked a grace­ful swan he saw swim­ming in a pond at Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens, who he named “Pooh.” His father com­bined the two names to cre­ate one of the most pop­u­lar char­ac­ters in chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture.

Win­nie-the-Pooh first appeared in sto­ries and poems in pop­u­lar mag­a­zines. In 1926 Milne col­lect­ed them in a book, Win­nie-the-Pooh, with illus­tra­tions by E.H. Shep­ard. Each chap­ter in the book is a self-con­tained episode or sto­ry. In the record­ing below, Milne reads Chap­ter Three (click here to open the text in new a win­dow) “In Which Pooh and Piglet Go Hunt­ing and Near­ly Catch a Woo­zle.”

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

And note this: Audiobooks.com also has a free tri­al offer where you can down­load a free audio­book. Details.

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Comments (13)
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  • Liz says:

    When I click the Free eBooks link, scroll down to Milne and attempt to view the books in ePub, Kin­dle, or PDF for­mats, I get the mes­sage: “The item is not avail­able due to issues with the item’s con­tent.”

  • Amy Koss says:

    Thank you for this! What a treat!

  • Kris Kells says:

    Oh, thank you! My mom used to read all of Pooh’s adven­tures to me when I was lit­tle. That was back in the 50’s. so many mem­o­ries and laughs. That was just the best Pooh treat I have had in a while. Thank you so much.

  • Margaret Rose STRINGER says:

    My gen­er­a­tion of baby boomers had a steady stream of this won­der­ful stuff through­out our child­hoods, lucky us! — and I have most of Mil­ne’s works on my shelves today.

    One thing I’ve noticed since lis­ten­ing to Dou­glas Adams read­ing “The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy” is that authors read­ing their own mate­r­i­al is not as good as it gets. But it’s still ter­rif­ic.

  • Kim K says:

    Very cool! So glad we have the tech­nol­o­gy to lis­ten to clas­sics like this!!!

  • Diphoko Thabo says:

    Well done this is a inter­est­ing book n when you read it , you don’t get bored

  • Liz says:

    Great find. Also, what is this music in the video? Very hoi pol­loi!

  • Akky says:

    This is WONDERFUL. Should be manda­to­ry read­ing for kids. And adults.

  • Shirley says:

    What a won­der­ful treat to hear the author’s own voice read­ing his work! His Win­nie the Pooh sto­ries have been a favourite of mine since child­hood. I read them with my chil­dren and hope to read them with my grand­chil­dren some­day.

  • Christina says:

    This is such a fan­tas­tic site! Thank you for all your hard work!

  • Solomon says:

    Utter­ly charm­ing. Missed hear­ing or read­ing any of Milne in my child­hood. My loss.

  • Rachel Street says:

    Hel­lo,
    I work for a tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny, we would like to use this record­ing of A A Milne in a pro­gram we are mak­ing. Please could you let me know who I would need to speak to regard­ing copy­right.
    Many thanks,
    rachel

  • Elizabeth says:

    Just won­der­ful!! Thank you!! I wish we had more of this amaz­ing clas­sic author read­ing my favorite book. It’s unfor­tu­nate how chil­dren are miss­ing out on so much these days! That’s just my opin­ion. Thank you for this amaz­ing treat!!!!

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