Alan Alexander Milne 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
to parents John Vince Milne, who was Scottish, and Sarah Marie Milne and grew up at Henley
House School, 6/7 Mortimer Road, Kilburn, a small public school run by his father. One
of his teachers was H. G. Wells, who taught there in 1889–90. Milne attended Westminster
School and Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied on a mathematics scholarship, graduating
with a B.A. in Mathematics in 1903. 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. He was recruited
into Military Intelligence to write propaganda articles for MI 7b between 1916 and 1918.
He was discharged on 14 February 1919, and settled in Mallord Street, Chelsea.
After the war, he wrote a denunciation of war titled Peace with Honour, which he retracted
somewhat with 1940's War with Honour. During World War II, Milne was one of the most prominent
critics of English 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 light-hearted 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."
Milne 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. 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 retired to the farm after a stroke and brain surgery in 1952
left him an invalid, and by August 1953 "he seemed very old and disenchanted". Milne died
in January 1956, aged 74. Literary career
1903 to 1925 After graduating from Cambridge in 1903, A.
A. Milne contributed humorous verse and whimsical essays to Punch, joining the staff in 1906
and becoming an assistant editor. During this period he published 18 plays and
3 novels, including the murder mystery The Red House Mystery. His son was born in August
1920 and in 1924 Milne produced a collection of children's 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. Milne was an early screenwriter for the nascent
British film industry, writing four stories filmed in 1920 for the company Minerva Films.
These were The Bump, starring Aubrey Smith; Twice Two; Five Pound Reward; and Bookworms
Some of these films survive in the archives of the British Film Institute. Milne had met
Howard when the actor starred in Milne’s play Mr Pim Passes By in London.
Looking back on this period, 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 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
have 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, Christopher Robin Milne, and various characters inspired by his son's stuffed animals,
most notably the bear named Winnie-the-Pooh. Christopher Robin Milne's stuffed bear, originally
named "Edward", was renamed "Winnie-the-Pooh" after a Canadian black bear named Winnie,
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, as the model. The rest of Christopher Robin
Milne's toys, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo and Tigger, were incorporated into A. A. Milne's
stories, two more characters - Rabbit and Owl - were created by Milne's imagination.
Christopher Robin Milne's own toys are now under glass in New York.
The fictional Hundred Acre Wood of the Pooh stories derives from Five Hundred Acre Wood
in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, South East England, where the Pooh stories were set.
Milne lived on the northern edge of the forest at Cotchford Farm, 51.090°N 0.107°E﻿ / 51.090;
0.107, and took his son walking there. E. H. Shepard drew on the landscapes of Ashdown
Forest as inspiration for many of the illustrations he provided for the Pooh books. The adult
Christopher Robin commented: "Pooh's Forest and Ashdown Forest are identical". The wooden
Pooh Bridge in Ashdown Forest, where Pooh and Piglet invented Poohsticks, is a tourist
attraction. Not yet known as Pooh, he made his first appearance
in a poem, "Teddy Bear", published in the British magazine Punch in February 1924. Pooh
first appeared in the London Evening News on Christmas Eve, 1925, in a story called
"The Wrong Sort Of Bees". 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. He also "gallantly stepped forward" to contribute a quarter of the costs
of dramatising P. G. Wodehouse's A Damsel in Distress. His book The World of Pooh won
the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958. 1929 onwards
The 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 had freed pre-war Punch from
its ponderous facetiousness; he had made a considerable reputation as a playwright on
both sides of the Atlantic; he had produced a witty piece of detective writing in The
Red House Mystery. But once Milne had, in his own words, "said goodbye to all that in
70,000 words", he had no intention of producing any reworkings lacking in originality, 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 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. 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", could not survive translation
to the theatre. A special introduction written by Milne is included in some editions of Grahame's
novel. Legacy and commemoration
The rights to A. A. Milne's Pooh books were left to four beneficiaries: his family, the
Royal Literary Fund, Westminster School and the Garrick Club. After Milne's death in 1956,
his widow sold her rights to the Pooh characters to Stephen Slesinger, whose widow sold the
rights after Slesinger's death to the Walt Disney Company, which has made many Pooh cartoon
movies, a Disney Channel television show, as well as Pooh-related merchandise. In 2001,
the other beneficiaries sold their interest in the estate to the Disney Corporation for
$350m. Previously Disney had been paying twice-yearly royalties to these beneficiaries. The estate
of E. H. Shepard also received a sum in the deal. The copyright on Pooh expires in 2026.
In 2008, a collection of original illustrations featuring Winnie-the-Pooh and his animal friends
sold for more than £1.2 million at auction in Sotheby's, London. Forbes magazine ranks
Winnie the Pooh the most valuable fictional character; in 2002 Winnie the Pooh merchandising
products alone had annual sales of more than $5.9 billion.
A memorial plaque in Ashdown Forest, unveiled by Christopher Robin in 1979, commemorates
the work of A. A. Milne and Shepard in creating the world of Pooh. Milne once wrote of Ashdown
Forest: "In that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will
always be playing". In 2003, Winnie the Pooh was listed at number 7 on the BBC's survey
The Big Read. 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.
Religious views Milne did not speak out much on the subject
of religion, although he used religious terms to explain his decision, while remaining a
pacifist, to join the army: "In fighting Hitler", he wrote, "we are truly fighting the Devil,
the Anti-Christ ... Hitler was a crusader against God."
His best known comment on the subject was recalled on his death:
He also wrote the poem "Explained":
Elizabeth Ann Said to her Nan:
"Please will you tell me how God began? Somebody must have made Him. So
Who could it be, 'cos I want to know?"
Works Novels
Lovers in London Once on a Time
Mr. Pim) The Red House Mystery
Two People Four Days' Wonder
Chloe Marr Non-fiction
Peace With Honour It's Too Late Now: The Autobiography of a
Writer War With Honour
War Aims Unlimited Year In, Year Out
Punch articles The Day's Play
Once A Week The Holiday Round
The Sunny Side Those Were the Days [The four volumes above,
compiled] Newspaper articles and book introductions
The Chronicles of Clovis by "Saki" [Introduction to]
Not That It Matters By Way of Introduction
Story collections for children A Gallery of Children
Winnie-the-Pooh The House at Pooh Corner
Short Stories Poetry collections for children
When We Were Very Young Now We Are Six
Story collections The Secret and other stories
The Birthday Party A Table Near the Band
Poetry For the Luncheon Interval [poems from Punch]
When We Were Very Young Now We Are Six
Behind the Lines The Norman Church
Screenplays and Plays Wurzel-Flummery
Belinda The Boy Comes Home
Make-Believe The Camberley Triangle
Mr. Pim Passes By The Red Feathers
The Bump, starring Aubrey Smith Twice Two
Five Pound Reward Bookworms
The Dover Road The Lucky One
The Truth About Blayds The Artist: A Duologue
Give Me Yesterday Ariadne
The Man in the Bowler Hat: A Terribly Exciting Affair
To Have the Honour Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers
Success Miss Marlow at Play
The Fourth Wall or The Perfect Alibi The Ivory Door
Toad of Toad Hall Michael and Mary
Other People's Lives Miss Elizabeth Bennet [based on Pride and
Prejudice] Sarah Simple
Gentleman Unknown The General Takes Off His Helmet in The Queen's
Book of the Red Cross The Ugly Duckling
Before the Flood Films
Michael and Mary was adapted to cinema in 1931.
The 1963 film The King's Breakfast was based on Milne's poem of the same name.
References
Further reading Thwaite, Ann. A.A. Milne: His Life. London:
Faber and Faber, 1990. ISBN 0571138888 Toby, Marlene. A.A. Milne, Author of Winnie-the-Pooh.
Chicago: Childrens Press, 1995. ISBN 051604270X Wullschläger, Jackie [1995]. Inventing Wonderland:
The Lives of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J. M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and A. A. Milne.
London: Methuen. ISBN 978-0-413-70330-9. External links
Works by A. A. Milne at Project Gutenberg Portraits of A. A. Milne in the National Portrait
Gallery Essays by Milne at Quotidiana.org
Milne extract in The Guardian Works by or about A. A. Milne in libraries
Profile at Just-Pooh.com