Paddington Bear
children's book character created by Michael Bond
Paddington Bear is an anthropomorphic Peruvian spectacled bear in British children's literature. He first appeared on 13 October 1958 in A Bear Called Paddington by British author Michael Bond. He has been featured in 29 books written by Bond, the last of which, Paddington at St. Paul's, was published posthumously in 2018. The books have been illustrated by Peggy Fortnum, David McKee, R. W. Alley, and other artists.
The friendly and polite spectacled bear from "Darkest Peru"—with his old hat, battered suitcase, duffel coat and love of marmalade sandwiches—has become a classic character in British children's literature. Paddington has good manners often addressing people as "Mr.", "Mrs.", and "Miss", but rarely by first names—and kindhearted, though he inflicts hard stares on those who incur his disapproval. He has an endless capacity for innocently getting into trouble, but is known to "try so hard to get things right". After being discovered in London Paddington station by the Brown family, he was adopted and named "Paddington Brown", as his original name in bear language was too hard for the (human) Browns to pronounce.
Paddington has become one of the most beloved British fictional characters—a Paddington Bear stuffed toy was chosen by British tunnellers as the first item to pass through to their French counterparts when the two sides of the Channel Tunnel were linked in 1994, and the Bear appeared with Queen Elizabeth II in a pre-recorded comedy segment for the Platinum Party at the Palace in 2022—and the Paddington books have been translated into 30 languages across 70 titles, with a total of more than 30 million copies sold worldwide.
The public source identifies “Paddington Bear” as children's book character created by Michael Bond. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Paddington, Bear and children's.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q632908. VIAF identifies the subject as 187231398. The Library of Congress control number is nb2016005931. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 2018, 1994 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paddington Bear” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.