A.A. Milne.

Born in 1882 in Kilburn, London, a district then undergoing rapid development, Alan Alexander Milne was the son of John Vine Milne, who operated Henley House School. The family lived at the school, where young Milne received his early education. From 1889 to 1890, his schoolteacher was the future novelist H.G. Wells.

He later attended Westminster School, a prestigious public school with royal patronage, before entering Trinity College, Cambridge in 1903 with a mathematics scholarship. Graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics, he began writing for the student magazine Granta.

Milne started his career in 1906 when he joined the staff of Punch magazine, writing humorous verse and essays. His first novel, Lovers in London, was published in 1905 but later disowned. In 1919, his comedy Mr. Pim Passes By enjoyed success in London and on Broadway, establishing him as a playwright.

In 1922, he published the bestselling locked-room mystery The Red House Mystery. He changed direction in 1924 when, inspired by his son Christopher Robin, he began writing children’s poetry and stories. He published When We Were Very Young in 1924, followed by Winnie-the-Pooh in 1926, Now We Are Six in 1927, and The House at Pooh Corner in 1928, all illustrated by E.H. Shepard.

Milne also wrote screenplays for silent films in 1920 for Minerva Films, and later adapted The Wind in the Willows as the play Toad of Toad Hall in 1929. During World War II, he served in the Home Guard and wrote propaganda for MI7, though he had expressed pacifist views in Peace with Honour 1934. His later works, such as the novel Chloe Marr 1946, were less successful.

In 1913, Milne married Dorothy Daphne de Sélincourt, with whom he had one son, Christopher Robin, born in 1920. He drew inspiration for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories from Christopher’s stuffed animals and his adventures in Ashdown Forest, near the family’s country home, Cotchford Farm.

The public association of Christopher with the fictional character strained their relationship. Christopher later married his maternal first cousin Lesley de Sélincourt in 1948 against his parents’ wishes, leading to a permanent estrangement. Milne also had a difficult relationship with his wife’s family; she was estranged from her brother for 30 years.

Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories have sold over 20 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than 40 languages, including Thai, Hebrew, and Braille. The characters were adapted into a Disney media franchise starting in 1966, introducing Pooh to generations of new fans.

The University of Texas at Austin acquired a collection of Milne’s manuscripts and personal effects in 1964, while the original manuscripts of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner reside at Trinity College Library, Cambridge. In 1979, a memorial plaque was unveiled in Ashdown Forest to commemorate the works of Milne and illustrator E.H. Shepard. Despite his own ambivalence toward his children’s books, Milne is remembered for creating Winnie-the-Pooh, a character whose popularity has spanned nearly a century.