 | |
| Author | Alexander Lenard |
|---|---|
| Language | Latin |
| Published | 1958 |
| Publisher | Methuen Publishing |
Winnie ille Pu is a 1958 translation of Winnie-the-Pooh into Latin by Alexander Lenard. The book was an unexpected hit, becoming the first foreign-language book to make The New York Times Best Seller list. Its success inspired the translation of a number of other children's books into Latin.
Lenard was teaching at a mining community in Brazil when he began translating Winnie-the-Pooh. He was motivated by his previous experience, teaching English to a boy in Rome by using the original Winnie-the-Pooh as an aid. Lenard was fired from his teaching job while he was still working on the translation, and he continued to work from São Paulo. Publishers were skeptical of the book's potential and Lenard self-published the first printing in 1958. [1]
The initial publication was successful and spurred interest from beyond Brazil. [1] The first publishing house to print the book was Bokförlaget Forum in Sweden; it was then picked up by Methuen Publishing in the UK and then E. P. Dutton in the US. [1] [2] When it was first published in the US, it received considerable praise from the press; the Christian Science Monitor went so far as to credit it with "saving Latin". [3] This positive attention caused bookstores to quickly sell out of their copies, as at first Dutton had only imported 1500 copies; the resulting shortage only increased interest in the book. [2] Overall, the book sold 125,000 copies in the US and spent 20 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, becoming the first non-English book to do so. [4] The book was particularly desirable as a coffee-table status symbol. [2] [5]
Classicist opinions on the book were broadly positive. K. Vadum Fractum and Kenneth Reckford called the book "superb entertainment" and noted correspondences between themes in Winnie-the-Pooh and Roman poetry. [6] Michiel Verweij , in a 2008 retrospective, argued that Lenard had carved out a niche by not copying the writing style of Cicero, as other Latinists had. [7]
However, some classicists were more critical. Even before publication, one scholar questioned the utility of the book as a teaching aid, saying "at the time when pupils would be expected to understand your Latin properly they would already have reached the age when the subject matter would be of no interest to them". [1] This line of criticism continued after publication, with C. J. Fordyce remarking that the translation was not sufficiently fun to justify itself. [8] Additionally, even some favorable reviewers, such as Harry C. Schnur , criticized the quality of some of Lenard's Latin. [5]
The success of Winnie ille Pu spurred further interest in Latin translations of children's books. In the five years after its publication, The Tale of Peter Rabbit , The Little Prince , and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland were all translated into Latin. However, after this brief renaissance, the enthusiasm for translation into Latin slowly declined. [9]
Winnie-the-Pooh is a 1926 children's book by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. The book is set in the fictional Hundred Acre Wood, with a collection of short stories following the adventures of an anthropomorphic teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, and his friends Christopher Robin, Piglet, Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit, Kanga, and Roo. It is the first of two story collections by Milne about Winnie-the-Pooh, the second being The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne and Shepard collaborated previously for English humour magazine Punch, and in 1924 created When We Were Very Young, a poetry collection. Among the characters in the poetry book was a teddy bear Shepard modelled after his son's toy. Following this, Shepard encouraged Milne to write about his son Christopher Robin Milne's toys, and so they became the inspiration for the characters in Winnie-the-Pooh.
A Latin Dictionary is a popular English-language lexicographical work of the Latin language, published by Harper and Brothers of New York in 1879 and printed simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Oxford University Press.
This is a list of bestselling novels in the United States in the 1960s, as determined by Publishers Weekly. The list features the most popular novels of each year from 1960 through 1969.
Martin Litchfield West, was a British philologist and classical scholar. In recognition of his contribution to scholarship, he was awarded the Order of Merit in 2014.
Eduard David Mortier FraenkelFBA was a German classical scholar who served as the Corpus Christi Professor of Latin at the University of Oxford from 1935 until 1953. Born to a family of assimilated Jews in the German Empire, he studied Classics at the universities of Berlin and Göttingen. In 1934, antisemitic legislation introduced by the Nazi Party forced him to seek refuge in the United Kingdom where he eventually settled at Corpus Christi College.
Belus was a legendary king of Tyre in Virgil's Aeneid and other Latin works. He was said to have been the father of Dido of Carthage, Pygmalion of Tyre, and Anna. The historical father of these figures was the king Mattan I, also known as MTN-BʿL, which classicist T. T. Duke suggests was made into the name Belus as a hypocorism.
Contemporary Latin is the form of the Literary Latin used since the end of the 19th century. Various kinds of contemporary Latin can be distinguished, including the use of Neo-Latin words in taxonomy and in science generally, and the fuller ecclesiastical use in the Catholic Church – but Living or Spoken Latin is the primary subject of this article.
Alexander Lenard was a Hungarian physician, writer, translator, painter, musician, poet and occasional language instructor. He was born in Budapest, Hungary and died in Dona Emma, in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil. He is best known as the Latin translator of A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh. He wrote non-fiction and translated fiction and non fiction in German, Latin, Hungarian, Italian and English.
Kathleen Freeman was a British classical scholar and author of detective novels. Her detective fiction was published under the pseudonym Mary Fitt. Freeman was a lecturer in Greek at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cardiff, between 1919 and 1946.
Sir Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors was an English classicist and medievalist who held the senior chairs of Latin at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. A textual critic, he was an expert in the study of manuscripts and their role in the reconstruction of classical texts.
Winnie-the-Pooh is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name in a children's story commissioned by London's Evening News for Christmas Eve 1925. The character is inspired by a stuffed toy that Milne had bought for his son Christopher Robin in Harrods department store, and a bear they had viewed at London Zoo.
The Confession of Faith, popularly known as the Belgic Confession, is a doctrinal standard document to which many Reformed churches subscribe. The Confession forms part of the Three Forms of Unity of the Reformed Church, which are also the official subordinate standards of the Dutch Reformed Church. The confession's chief author was Guido de Brès, a preacher of the Reformed churches of the Netherlands, who died a martyr to the faith in 1567, during the Dutch Reformation. De Brès first wrote the Belgic Confession in 1559.
Winnie the Pooh is a media franchise produced by The Walt Disney Company, based on A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard's stories featuring Winnie-the-Pooh. It started in 1966 with the theatrical release of the short Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.
Leighton Durham Reynolds was a British Latinist who was known for his work on textual criticism. Spending his entire teaching career at Brasenose College, Oxford, he prepared the most commonly cited edition of Seneca the Younger's Letters.
Angus Morton Bowie is a British academic, Emeritus Lobel fellow in Classics at The Queen's College, Oxford. His research interests include Homer, Herodotus, Greek lyric, tragedy and comedy, Virgil, Greek mythology, structuralism, narratology, and other theories of literature.
Elizabeth Hazelton "Hazel" Haight was an American classical scholar and academic who specialised in Latin teaching. She spent most of her career working for Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Haight was the second female president of the American Philological Association, and first woman to chair the Advisory Council of the American School of Classical Studies at Rome. She published eleven books in the field of Classics, as well as histories of Vassar and James Monroe Taylor. Her works focused on Latin Literature and the Greek novel, before she began the study of symbolism in Latin literature in her final publications. She was involved in Vassar's war efforts during World War I, and supporting foreign scholars during World War II, and was consistently interested in promoting women's education as a force for good in American society.
Laura Bennett Sumner was an American classical numismatist and poet, who was a professor at the University of Mary Washington.
Edward Courtney was a Northern Irish classicist. After reading Classics at Trinity College Dublin, he taught Latin literature at King's College London until 1983. He then worked in the United States and held the Basil L. Gildersleeve Professorship at the University of Virginia when he retired. He specialised in textual criticism, publishing critical editions of Valerius Flaccus, Juvenal, Statius, and Petronius.
Ethel H. Brewster was an American college professor and philologist. She was Dean of Women and taught Greek and Latin at Swarthmore College, where she was a member of the faculty from 1916 to 1947.
Rachel Louisa Sargent Robinson was an American classical scholar. While working at North Central College, she published The Story of Greek Athletics (1927), which would later get an updated edition, Sources for the History of Greek Athletics (1955).
