MILNE
(miln)
British
author best known for his Winnie-the-Pooh books
Common
clue:
Tigger’s
creator; Pooh's creator; Eeyore's creator; “Now We Are Six”
author; Heffalump's creator
Crossword
puzzle frequency:
once a year
Frequency
in English language:
19064 / 86800
News:
A
Biography of A.A. Milne
Video:
The
House At Pooh Corner
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.
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
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. Reputedly, a Canadian black bear named Winnie
(after Winnipeg), 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, is the source of the name. After its
heroics in September 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.
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 durable,
character-led and witty piece of detective writing in The Red
House Mystery -- indeed, his 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!"
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article is licensed under the GNU
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It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "A. A. Milne".
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