A.A. Milne
(PCM) A.A. Milne (Alan Alexander) was born on January 18, 1882, in London. He attended Cambridge University to study mathematics but soon found his true passion was writing. After graduating from Cambridge, Milne began his writing career working for Punch Magazine. He married Daphne” de Sélincourt in 1903. He was writing for Punch when World War One broke out in 1914. Milne enlisted even though by nature he was a pacifist.
After the war Milne returned home he settled in London with his wife and in 1920, had their only child Christopher Robin. From 1919 when Milne was discharged from the service, he succeeded as a playwright, even adapting Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows.
Milne had a talent for writing light verse or poetry his first volume, entitled When We Were Very Young, was published in 1924, and was inspired by watching his young son. Milne wrote a second volume called Now We Are Six, published in 1927.
It was, however, another book written in 1926 that would gain Milne his reputation and celebrate him as a children’s author; that book was Winnie The Pooh. Winnie The Pooh told of the adventure of a small stuffed bear who lived with his friends Rabbit, Owl, Eeyore, Kanga, and her son Roo and Tigger. These stories took place in The 100 Acre Wood and featured a small boy named Christopher Robin. The stories themselves were based on the stuffed toys owned by Christopher. He wrote a sequel to the Pooh stories in 1928 called The House At Pooh Corner. These two books would become classics in children’s literature and remain so to this day.
After the success of the Winnie the Pooh books, Milne went on writing for adults, he produced novels and short stories, none of which would gain the popularity of the small bear everyone loved so much.
Milne died on January 31, 1956, after an illness.
In the 1960s, Disney Studios bought the rights to the Pooh books, and a series of films and TV shows would come out of The Disney Studios for many years. The Disney World Parks each have a ride based on the Pooh characters, The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and small children can almost always be found with a Winnie the Pooh toy of one kind or another.
A.A. Milne left us in 1956, but it seems his children’s characters will be remembered for many years.