A Bear Called Paddington.

Published in London by William Collins in October 1958, Michael Bond's A Bear Called Paddington introduced the world to one of the most beloved characters in twentieth-century children's literature. The book opens on the platform of Paddington Station in London, where Mr. and Mrs. Brown discover a small bear from Darkest Peru sitting on a suitcase with a note pinned to his duffel coat that reads, "Please look after this bear. Thank you." Adopted into the Brown family and christened Paddington after the station where they found him, the young bear moves into 32 Windsor Gardens and sets about learning the ways of London with a mixture of unfailing politeness, dogged good intentions, and a genius for landing in trouble entirely by accident - whether at the barber, in a department store, at the theatre, or on the beach. Illustrated by Peggy Fortnum with the deft line that would become inseparable from Paddington's public image, the book unfolds across eight self-contained chapters and established at once the tone and cast that would carry the character through more than a dozen further volumes and, in the fullness of time, onto stage and screen. Bond, then a young BBC cameraman who had bought a small stuffed bear on Christmas Eve 1956 as a last-minute gift for his wife, drew on that toy for the character; the book he wrote around it has since sold in the tens of millions worldwide and taken its place among the enduring classics of postwar children's writing.