In 2018, five works of original art from the book sold for £917,500, including a map of the Hundred Acre Wood that sold for £430,000 and set a record for the most expensive book illustration.[23]
Sequels
Milne and Shepard went on to collaborate on two more books: Now We Are Six (1927) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928).[1] Now We Are Six is a poetry volume like When We Were Very Young, and includes some poetry about Winnie-the-Pooh. The House at Pooh Corner is a second volume of stories about Pooh, and introduces the character Tigger.[1] Milne never wrote another Pooh book, and died in 1956. Penguin Books has called When We Were Very Young, Winnie-the-Pooh, Now We Are Six, and The House At Pooh Corner "the basis of the entire Pooh canon."[1]
The first authorized Pooh book after Milne's death was Return to the Hundred Acre Wood in 2009, by David Benedictus. It was written with the full backing of Milne's estate, which took the trustees ten years to agree to.[24] In the story, a new character, Lottie the Otter, is introduced.[25] The illustrations are by Mark Burgess.[26] The next authorized sequel, The Best Bear in All The World, was published in 2016 by Egmont.[27] It was written by Paul Bright, Jeanne Willis, Kate Saunders and Brian Sibley with illustrations again by Mark Burgess. The four authors each wrote a short story about one of the seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall.[28][29]
Adaptations
Following The Walt Disney Company's licensing of certain rights to Pooh from Stephen Slesinger and the A. A. Milne Estate in the 1960s, the Milne storylines were used by Disney in its cartoon featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.[30] The "look" of Pooh was adapted by Disney from Stephen Slesinger's distinctive American Pooh with his famous red shirt that had been created and used in commerce by Slesinger since the 1930s.[31]
Parts of the book were adapted to three Russian-language short animated films directed by Fyodor Khitruk: Winnie-the-Pooh (based on chapter 1), Winnie-the-Pooh Pays a Visit (based on chapter 2), and Winnie-the-Pooh and a Busy Day (based on chapters 4 and 6).[32]
In 2022, Jagged Edge Productions announced that a horror film starring the character was put in production, and was released on February 15, 2023.[33] This production became possible after the book became public domain in the United States.[34] A sequel was released in 2024.
Passage into the public domain
Winnie-the-Pooh's entrance into the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2022 was noted by several news publications, generally in the context of a greater Public Domain Day article.[35][36][37][38] The book entered the public domain in Canada in 2007.[39][40][41] The UK copyright will expire at the end of 2026, the 70th year since Milne's death. As Shepard lived until 1976, the UK copyright on his illustrations will remain in effect until 2047.
