“What day is it?” asked Pooh.
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh.”
.... A.A. Milne, born 139 years ago today, 18th January 1882 .... Read more below
Born 139 years ago today, 18th January, 1882, A. A. Milne (Alan Alexander Milne) was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work. Milne served in both World Wars, joining the British Army in World War I, and as a captain of the British Home Guard in World War II. He was the father of bookseller Christopher Robin Milne, upon whom the character Christopher Robin is based.
Alan Alexander Milne was born in Kilburn, London, and grew up at Henley House School, Kilburn, a small independent school run by his father. One of his teachers was H. G. Wells, who taught there in 1889. Milne attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied on a mathematics scholarship, graduating with a B.A. in Mathematics in 1903.
Milne married Dorothy "Daphne" de Sélincourt (1890–1971) in 1913 and their son Christopher Robin Milne was born in 1920. In 1925, Milne bought a country home, Cotchford Farm, in Hartfield, East Sussex.
After graduating from Cambridge University in 1903, A. A. Milne contributed humorous verse and whimsical essays to Punch, joining the staff in 1906 and becoming an assistant editor.
From 1903 to 1925 he published 18 plays and three novels, including the murder mystery The Red House Mystery (1922). After Christopher Robin was born (August 1920), 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 A 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 (founded in 1920 by the actor Leslie Howard and his friend and story editor Adrian Brunel). 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.
Milne is most famous for his two Pooh books about a boy named Christopher Robin after his son, Christopher Robin Milne (1920–1996), 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 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 the young Milne named "Pooh". E. H. Shepard illustrated the original Pooh books, using his own son's teddy Growler ("a magnificent bear") 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, and two more characters – Rabbit and Owl – were created by Milne's imagination. Christopher Robin Milne's own toys are now on display in New York where 750,000 people visit them every year.
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, 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." Popular tourist locations at Ashdown Forest include: Galleon's Lap, The Enchanted Place, the Heffalump Trap and Lone Pine, Eeyore’s Sad and Gloomy Place, and the wooden Pooh Bridge where Pooh and Piglet invented Poohsticks.
Not yet known as Pooh, he made his first appearance in a poem, "Teddy Bear", published in Punch magazine in February 1924 and republished in When We Were Very Young. 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 four 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. The World of Pooh won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958.
Milne and his wife became estranged from their son, who came to resent what he saw as his father's exploitation of his childhood and came to hate the books that had thrust him into the public eye. Christopher's marriage to his first cousin, Lesley de Sélincourt, distanced him still further from his parents – Lesley's father and Christopher's mother had not spoken to each other for 30 years.
During World War II, Milne was a captain in the British 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.
A few wonderful quotes from the world inhabited by Pooh, and Piglet ............
“You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”
“Some people care too much. I think it's called love.”
“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.”
“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?”
“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”
“I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time.”
“How do you spell 'love'?" - Piglet
"You don't spell it...you feel it." - Pooh”
“Sometimes,' said Pooh, 'the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”
“If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”
“I used to believe in forever, but forever's too good to be true”
“Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That's the problem.”
“I don’t feel very much like Pooh today," said Pooh.
"There there," said Piglet. "I’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.”
This is my colourised version of the original black, and white photograph by Howard Coster taken in 1926, but I have posted the untouched original image within the comments.
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