{"id":34,"date":"2016-04-13T13:42:50","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T20:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl419ashley\/?page_id=34"},"modified":"2016-04-15T21:01:39","modified_gmt":"2016-04-16T04:01:39","slug":"a-a-milne","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl419ashley\/a-a-milne\/","title":{"rendered":"The Author"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alan Alexander “A.A.” Milne was born in London on January 18, 1882.\u00a0A novelist, poet, playwright and essayist, Milne\u00a0was a prolific writer for over thirty years. His career can be roughly divided\u00a0into three parts: the first as a humorist for the British humour magazine,\u00a0Punch<\/em>, the second as a playwright, and the third as a children’s author.<\/p>\n

The years Milne\u00a0spent studying at\u00a0Westminister School and Trinity College, Cambridge were incredibly formative years for his career as a writer and as an individual. Initially, he lived the life of a scholar, having attended Cambridge\u00a0due to its educational reputation and emphasis on mathematics. (In fact, he graduated with a B.A in Mathematics.) However, Milne\u00a0began to develop a passion for reading\u00a0by nurturing\u00a0his aptitude for words through literary studies and his involvement with a student magazine. He edited and wrote for\u00a0the Cambridge undergraduate magazine,\u00a0Granta<\/em>, and later\u00a0Punch; <\/em>both experiences undoubtedly\u00a0motivated his foray into writing as a career.\u00a0While Milne established a reputation as a playwright and an essayist, having published numerous works ranging from satirical magazine essays to comedic plays such as Belinda <\/em>and\u00a0The Truth about Blayds<\/em>,\u00a0his most enduring work to this day has been his children’s books set in the fictional Hundred Acre Wood:\u00a0Winnie-the-Pooh.<\/em><\/p>\n

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A famous and iconic photograph by Howard Coster of A.A. Milne, his son Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear at Cotchford Farm, their home in Sussex, dated 1926 and in the collection of the National Portrait Galley, London, a gift of the estate of Howard Carter 1959.<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1913, Milne married Dorothy “Daphne” de S\u00e9lincourt and they had one son named Christopher Robin (1920). The birth of his only son Christopher Robin affected Milne’s writing career, as he began to take an interest in writing\u00a0books for children. In fact, his son and his stuffed animals\u00a0in the household became the source inspiration for the character of Christopher Robin and his collection of animal friends in Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books. Milne explains in his Autobiography<\/em>\u00a0that the character of Christopher Robin is also as much himself as it is his son between the ages of three and six. While Milne may have been thinking about his own childhood and portraying that in his books, there are signs that he\u00a0was also reflecting on the people the surrounded him in his life as he was writing Winnie-the-Pooh.<\/p>\n

The first book, When We Were Very Young <\/em>(1924)\u00a0<\/em>was considered to be a success\u00a0by Milne’s publisher at the time. When We Were Very Young<\/em>\u00a0consisted of a series of poems written\u00a0about Christopher Robin. Due the popularity of Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne subsequently published\u00a0a\u00a0sequel titled\u00a0Winnie-the-Pooh\u00a0<\/em>(1926), another book of poetry,\u00a0Now We Are Six\u00a0<\/em>(1927), and lastly a book that introduced Tigger,\u00a0The House at Pooh Corner<\/em> (1928).\u00a0Milne created a total of four books in the Pooh universe between 1923 and 1928, all of which are still in print. Yet, his\u00a0success was\u00a0met with some criticism. Critics rejected his children’s books for what they perceived to be smugness, the acceptance\u00a0of sexist and imperialist values, and a lack of social responsibility.\u00a0Nonetheless, there is no denying\u00a0the popularity and success of Milne’s writing, as his books have spanned across\u00a0eight decades worth of readers.<\/p>\n

It is important to note how Milne’s children’s books engage with language in a intelligent way that demonstrates his intrigue\u00a0with sounds, rhythms, and uses of words. For Milne, language behaved as a tool for entertainment, not used to instruct or philosophize. His language contains\u00a0hidden messages through the use of special punctuation and satirical capitalization or lack of capitalization\u00a0(Lurie 15). Such a\u00a0whimsical attitude towards language allows\u00a0Milne to engage both the younger emerging reader and the adult reader with his work in a way that was\u00a0perhaps not conventional at the time for other children’s authors. His books\u00a0provide a temporality\u00a0that is key to the construction of a childhood that is assumed and defined in terms of both the child within the text and the implied reader of the text.<\/p>\n

Milne’s\u00a0Winnie-the-Pooh books are universally loved to this day because of the\u00a0crafted wordplay, engaging prose style, light verse and\u00a0sentimentality\u00a0that simultaneously typifies memorable characters and makes\u00a0fun of\u00a0them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alan Alexander “A.A.” Milne was born in London on January 18, 1882.\u00a0A novelist, poet, playwright and essayist, Milne\u00a0was a prolific writer for over thirty years. His career can be roughly divided\u00a0into three parts: the first as a humorist for the British humour magazine,\u00a0Punch, the second as a playwright, and the third as a children’s author. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22990,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-34","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl419ashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl419ashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl419ashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl419ashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22990"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl419ashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl419ashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl419ashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34\/revisions\/180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl419ashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}