Biography
Alan Alexander Milne (January 18, 1882 - January 31, 1956), also known as A. A. Milne, is an English author best known for his books about the talking stuffed bear; Winnie the Pooh and for various children's poems, some of which also feature Winnie-the-Pooh and friends.
Milne was born in Scotland but raised in London. As a child 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 was published in Granta, a student magazine.
Milne became a contributor and later assistant editor for the humorous British magazine Punch. His son Christopher Robin Milne was born in 1920. Milne joined the British Army in World War I but after the war wrote a denunciation of war titled "Peace with Honour" (1934) (which he retracted somewhat in 1940 with "War with Honour"). In 1925, he bought a country home, Cotchford Farm in Hartfield, East Sussex. This farm is where he retired to after brain surgery in 1952 left him an invalid.
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He is most famous for his Pooh books, which feature 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. A Canadian black bear named Winnie (Winnipeg), used as a military mascot by the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, a Canadian Infantry Regiment, in World War One and left to London Zoo after the war, is said to have been the source of the name for Milne's most famous character. E. H. Shepard illustrated the original Pooh books.
After Milne's death, rights to the Pooh characters were sold to the Walt Disney Company, which has made a number of Pooh cartoon movies, as well as a large amount of Pooh-related merchandise.
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. His poems have been parodied many times, including in the book Now We Are Sixty.
He also adapted Kenneth Grahame's novel The Wind in the Willows for the stage as Toad of Toad Hall.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on A.A. Milne.
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