A. A. Milne

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
A. A. Milne

Born: January 18, 1882
Scotland
Died: January 31, 1956 (aged 74)
Hartfield, Sussex, England
Occupation: Novelist, Playwright, Poet

Alan Alexander Milne (January 18, 1882 – January 31, 1956), also known as A. A. Milne, was a British 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.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Milne (pronounced mĭln) was born in Scotland but raised in London at Henley House School, 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 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 comic 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 by creating fatuous parodies of the Christopher Robin poems in some of his later stories.)

During World War II, he was Captain of the Home Guard in Hartfield & Forest Row, insisting on being plain 'Mr Milne' to the members of his platoon.

Milne married Dorothy (nicknamed "Daphne") de Selincourt 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. Rolling Stones' lead guitarist Brian Jones would later reside at Cotchford Farm until his death in 1969.

[edit] Literary career

Milne is most famous for his 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. The source of the name is reputedly a Canadian black bear named Winnie (after Winnipeg), that was used as a military mascot by the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, a Canadian Infantry Regiment in World War I, and left to London Zoo after the war. After its heroics On September 14 1915, the bear was named 'Winnie the Pooh', years before Milne adopted it. 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.

Milne also wrote a number of poems, including Vespers, They're Changing Guard at Buckingham Palace, and King John's Christmas, which were published in the books When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. Several of Milnes'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.

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 had freed pre-war Punch from its ponderous facetiousness; he had made a considerable reputation as a playwright (like his idol J. M. Barrie) on both sides of the Atlantic; he had 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 had 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 the four children's books), he had 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 The Piper at the Gates of Dawn could not survive translation to the theater. A special introduction written by Milne is included in some editions of Grahame's novel.

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 UK universities.

[edit] Biographies

Milne's friend Frank Swinnerton's book The Georgian Literary Scene contains a substantial section about him; his son has written several books of autobiography: The Enchanted Places, in particular, is an account of his attempt to escape from the shadow of a famous father and a burdensome name; The Path Through the Trees continues the story into adult life. Ann Thwaite's AA Milne: His Life is an excellent and detailed biography, although it gives little space to the plays; a spin-off book tells the story for a younger readership, concentrating on Pooh.

[edit] Works

[edit] Novels

  • Lovers in London, (1905) (Some consider this more of a short story collection; Milne didn't like it and considered The Day's Play as his first book)
  • Once on a Time, (1917) [a fairytale with an adult slant]
  • Mr. Pim, (1921)
  • The Red House Mystery, (1921)
  • Two People, (1931) (Inside jacket claims this is Milne's first attempt at a novel.)
  • Four Days' Wonder, (1933)
  • Chloe Marr, (1946)

[edit] Non-Fiction

  • When I Was Very Young, (1930) (illustrated by E. H. Shepard)
  • Peace With Honour, (1934)
  • It's Too Late Now: the autobiography of a writer, (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) [selection of Punch pieces from the above four books]

Selections of newspaper articles and introductions to books by others:

  • Not That It Matters, (1920)
  • By Way of Introduction, (1929)

[edit] Story Collections for Children

[edit] Poetry

For the Luncheon Interval [poems from Punch]

The Kings Breakfast

[edit] Plays

Milne wrote over 25 plays including:

  • Wurzel-Flummery, (1917)
  • Belinda, (1918)
  • The Boy Comes Home, (1918)
  • Make-Believe, (1918) [a play 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) [aka Success in the UK]
  • The Great Broxopp, (1923)
  • Ariadne, (1924)
  • The Man in the Bowler Hat: a terribly exciting affair", (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) [aka They Don't Mean Any Harm]
  • Miss Elizabeth Bennett (based on Pride and Prejudice?, [1936])
  • 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)

[edit] Books on Pooh and Milne

[edit] Films

  • The Fourth Wall was made into a film called The Perfect Alibi
  • Michael and Mary was filmed in 1932

[edit] References

  • Thwaite, Ann (2004). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Milne, Alan Alexander. 

    [edit] External links

    Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
    Persondata
    NAME Milne, A. A.
    ALTERNATIVE NAMES Milne, Alan Alexander
    SHORT DESCRIPTION Novelist, Playwright, Poet
    DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1882
    PLACE OF BIRTH Scotland
    DATE OF DEATH January 31, 1956
    PLACE OF DEATH Hartfield, Sussex, England
    Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../a/2E/_/A._A._Milne_174b.html"