Everything about A A Milne totally explained
Alan Alexander Milne (
January 18,
1882 –
January 31,
1956) was an
English author, best known for his
books about the
teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.
Biography
A. A. Milne was born in
Hampstead,
London,
England and grew up at
Henley House School, 6/7 Mortimer Road,
Kilburn,
London, a small
independent school run by his father, John V. Milne. One of his teachers was
H. G. Wells. He attended
Westminster School and
Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied on a
mathematics scholarship. While there, he edited and wrote for
Granta, a student magazine. He collaborated with his brother Kenneth and their articles appeared over the initials AKM. Milne's work came to the attention of the leading British humour magazine
Punch, where Milne was to become a contributor and later an assistant editor.
Milne joined the
British Army in
World War I and served as an officer in the
Royal Warwickshire Regiment and later, after a debilitating illness, the
Royal Corps of Signals. After the war, he wrote a denunciation of war titled
Peace With Honour (1934), which he retracted somewhat with 1940's
War With Honour. During
World War II, Milne was one of the most prominent critics of English humour writer
P. G. Wodehouse, who was captured at his country home in
France by the
Nazis and imprisoned for a year. Wodehouse made radio broadcasts about his internment, which were broadcast from Berlin. Although the lighthearted broadcasts made fun of the Germans, Milne accused Wodehouse of committing an act of near
treason by cooperating with his country's enemy. Wodehouse got some revenge on his former friend by creating fatuous parodies of the Christopher Robin poems in some of his later stories, and claiming that Milne "was probably jealous of all other writers.... But I loved his stuff."
During World War II, A. A. Milne was Captain of the
Home Guard in Hartfield & Forest Row, insisting on being plain 'Mr. Milne' to the members of his platoon.
He married Dorothy "Daphne" de Sélincourt in 1913, and their only son,
Christopher Robin Milne, was born in 1920. In 1925, A. A. Milne bought a country home,
Cotchford Farm, in
Hartfield,
East Sussex. He retired to the farm after a stroke and brain surgery in 1952 left him an invalid. Cotchford Farm was where the
Rolling Stones' lead guitarist
Brian Jones would later live and be found drowned in 1969. Cotchford Farm has since been demolished, due to the excessive maintenance and repair costs, and a new house built on the site.
Literary career
1905 to 1925
A. A. Milne contributed to the British humour magazine
Punch, joining the staff in 1906 writing humorous verse and whimsical essays, and later becoming an assistant editor..
During this period he published 18 plays and 3 novels, including the murder mystery
The Red House Mystery (1922). His son was born in August 1920 and in 1924 Milne produced a collection of children poems
When We Were Very Young, which were illustrated by
Punch staff cartoonist
E. H. Shepard. A collection of short stories for children
Gallery of Children and other stories that became part of the Winnie-the-Pooh books were first published in 1925.
Looking back on this period (in 1926) Milne observed that when he told his agent that he was going to write a detective story, he was told that what the country wanted was from a "
Punch humorist" was a humorous story; when two years later he said he was writing nursery rhymes, his agent and publisher were convinced he should write another detective story; and after another two years he was being told that writing a detective story would be in the worst of taste given the demand for children's books. He concluded that "the only excuse which I've yet discovered for writing anything is that I want to write it; and I should be as proud to be delivered of a Telephone Directory
con amore as I should be ashamed to create a Blank Verse Tragedy at the bidding of others."
1926 to 1928
Milne is most famous for his two Pooh books about a boy named
Christopher Robin, after his son, and various characters inspired by his son's stuffed animals, most notably the bear named
Winnie-the-Pooh. Christopher Robin's bear, originally named "Edward", was renamed "Winnie-the-Pooh" after a
Canadian black bear named
Winnie (after
Winnipeg), which was used as a military mascot in World War I, and left to
London Zoo during the war. "The pooh" comes from a swan called "Pooh".
E. H. Shepard illustrated the original Pooh books, using his own son's teddy, Growler ("a magnificent bear"), as the model. Christopher Robin Milne's own toys are now under glass in
New York.
Winnie-the-Pooh was published in 1926, followed by
The House at Pooh Corner in 1928. A second collection of nursery rhymes
Now We Are Six was published in 1927. All three books were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. Milne also published four plays in this period.
1929 onwards
The overwhelming success of his children's books was to become a source of considerable annoyance to Milne, whose self-avowed aim was to write whatever he pleased, and who had, until then, found a ready audience for each change of direction: he'd freed pre-war
Punch from its ponderous facetiousness; he'd made a considerable reputation as a playwright (like his idol
J. M. Barrie) on both sides of the Atlantic; he'd produced a witty piece of detective writing in
The Red House Mystery (although this was severely criticised by
Raymond Chandler for the implausibility of its plot). Indeed, Milne's publisher was displeased when he announced his intention to write poems for children, and he'd never lacked an audience.
But once Milne had, in his own words, "said goodbye to all that in 70,000 words" (the approximate length of his four principal children's books), he'd no intention of producing a copy of a copy, given that one of the sources of inspiration, his son, was growing older.
His reception remained warmer in America than Britain, and he continued to publish novels and short stories, but by the late 1930s the audience for Milne's grown-up writing had largely vanished: he observed bitterly in his autobiography that a critic had said that the hero of his latest play ("God help it") was simply "Christopher Robin grown up... what an obsession with me children are become!".
Even his old literary home,
Punch, where the
When We Were Very Young verses had first appeared, was ultimately to reject him, as Christopher Milne details in his autobiography
The Enchanted Places, although Methuen continued to publish whatever Milne wrote, including the long poem 'The Norman Church' and an assembly of articles entitled
Year In, Year Out (which Milne likened to a benefit night for the author).
He also adapted
Kenneth Grahame's novel
The Wind in the Willows for the stage as
Toad of Toad Hall. The title was an implicit admission that such chapters as Chapter 7,
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, couldn't survive translation to the theatre. A special introduction written by Milne is included in some editions of Grahame's novel.
Several of Milne's children's poems were set to music by the composer
Harold Fraser-Simson. His poems have been parodied many times, including with the books
When We Were Rather Older and
Now We Are Sixty.
After Milne's death, his widow sold the rights to the Pooh characters to
the Walt Disney Company, which has made a number of Pooh cartoon movies, as well as a large amount of Pooh-related merchandise. She also destroyed his papers.
Royalties from the Pooh characters paid by Disney to the
Royal Literary Fund, part-owner of the Pooh copyright, provide the income used to run the Fund's Fellowship Scheme, placing professional writers in U.K. universities.
Works
Novels
Non-fiction
Peace With Honour (1934)
(1939)
War With Honour (1940)
Year In, Year Out (1952) (illustrated by E. H. Shepard)
Punch articles
The Day's Play (1910)
Once a Week (1914)
The Holiday Round (1912)
The Sunny Side (1921)
Those Were the Days (1929) [selectionof Punch pieces from the above four books]
Selections of newspaper articles and introductions to books by others
The Chronicles of Clovis by "Saki" (1911)
Not That It Matters (1920)
By Way of Introduction (1929)
Story collections for children
Gallery of Children (1925)
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) (illustrated by E. H. Shepard)
The House at Pooh Corner (1928) (illustrated by E. H. Shepard)
Short Stories
A Table Near the Band (1950)
Poetry
For the Luncheon Interval [poemsfrom Punch]
When We Were Very Young (1924) (illustrated by E. H. Shepard)
Now We Are Six (1927) (illustrated by E. H. Shepard)
Behind the Lines (1940)
The Norman Church (1948)
Plays
Milne wrote over 25 plays, including:
Wurzel-Flummery (1917)
Belinda (1918)
The Boy Comes Home (1918)
Make-Believe (1918) [aplay for children]
The Camberley Triangle (1919)
Mr. Pim Passes By (1919)
The Red Feathers (1920)
The Romantic Age (1920)
The Stepmother (1920)
The Truth about Blayds (1920)
The Dover Road (1921)
The Lucky One (1922)
The Artist: A Duologue (1923)
Give Me Yesterday (1923) [a.k.a.Success in the U.K.]
The Great Broxopp (1923)
Ariadne (1924)
(1924)
To Have the Honour (1924)
Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers (1926)
Success (1926)
Miss Marlow at Play (1927)
The Fourth Wall or The Perfect Alibi (1928)
The Ivory Door (1929)
Toad of Toad Hall (1929) (adaptation of The Wind in the Willows)
Michael and Mary (1930)
Other People's Lives (1933) [a.k.a.They Don't Mean Any Harm]
Miss Elizabeth Bennett (1936) [basedon Pride and Prejudice?]
Sarah Simple (1937)
Gentleman Unknown (1938)
The General Takes Off His Helmet (1939) in The Queen's Book of the Red Cross
The Ugly Duckling (1946)
Before the Flood (1951)
Books on Pooh and Milne
Crews, Frederick, The Pooh Perplex, Chicago & London, University of Chicago Press, 2003 (1st ed. 1963) ISBN 0-226-12058-9
Crews, Frederick, Postmodern Pooh, New York, North Point Press, 2001 ISBN 0-86547-654-3
Hoff, Benjamin, The Tao of Pooh, New York, Penguin, 1983 ISBN 0-14-006747-7
Hoff, Benjamin, The Te of Piglet, New York, Dutton Adult, 1992 ISBN 0-525-93496-0
Milne, Christopher Robin and A. R. Melrose (ed.), Beyond the World of Pooh: Selections from the Memoirs of Christopher Milne, New York, Dutton, 1998 ISBN 0-525-45888-3
Thwaite, Ann, A. A. Milne: His Life, New York, Random House, 1990 ISBN 0-394-58724-3
Tyerman Williams, John, Pooh and the Philosophers: In Which It Is Shown That All of Western Philosophy Is Merely a Preamble to Winnie-The-Pooh, London, Methuen, 1995 ISBN 0-525-45520-5
Wullschlager, Jackie, Inventing Wonderland: The Lives and Fantasies of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J. M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame and A. A. Milne, New York & Detroit, The Free Press, 1996 ISBN 0-684-82286-5
Films
Michael and Mary was adapted to cinema in 1931.
Further Information
Get more info on 'A A Milne'.
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