Who is Alan Milne? Milne Alan Alexander. short biography
Known as the literary father of Winnie the Pooh. The stories about the bear cub "with sawdust in his head" became one of the writer's greatest victories, but at the same time, the most terrible defeat in his life. “With seventy thousand words, I said goodbye to all my previous work,” he lamented. But first things first.
Alan Milne was born in 1882 in London, attended a private school, the director of which was his father. Among the teachers of the young Milne was Herbert Wells. However, we have no data that the famous science fiction writer had any influence on the literary career of his student.
Later, Milne entered Westminster School, and then at the elite Trinity College Cambridge, where he studied mathematics. Despite studying the exact sciences, the young man decided to make a living through literature. After graduating from Cambridge, he ended up in Punch magazine and soon became an assistant editor. Until 1922, Milne managed to write 18 plays and three novels, including the detective "Secrets of the Red House."
It became a trauma of a lifetime for him. In 1914, the writer went to Flanders. According to journalist Barry Gun, he decided to take this step only because his beloved wife was terribly fond of the officers in military uniforms who flooded London. Dorothy, for her family - Daphne, always wanted to be proud of her husband. Despite the fact that Alan Milne spent relatively little time on the front, he nevertheless participated in major battles, such as the famous Battle of the Somme, which is often called simply "the massacre". After the war, the writer returned as a staunch supporter of peace and for a long time cherished the dream of pacifist labor. The book "Peace with Honor" was published in 1931. This, however, did not stop Alan Milne from becoming the captain of the British Self-Defense Force in 1939. He explained his step by the fact that the fight against Hitler, "Antichrist" and "crusader against God" is a just thing.
In the 1920s, Milne became one of the first screenwriters of young British cinema. He has four films on his account, copies of which are now kept at the British Film Institute. All the work of the writer before the appearance of the stories about Winnie the Pooh is continuous, mostly successful, literary experiments. It was he who replaced the heavyweight satire of the pre-war "Punch" with light and subtle humor. But within the framework of satire, he felt cramped, and at a time when the agent and publisher insisted that he should continue to write caricatures and bizarre essays for Punch, Milne took up detective novels. A couple of years later, these same people assured that detectives were his vocation. Alan Milne could find his audience in any genre. Everything changed when the first book of stories about Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh saw the light of day.
This is not to say that the changes happened overnight. In 1924, four years after the birth of his son Christopher Robin, Milne published a collection of children's poems "When We Were Little", illustrated by Ernest Sheppard. The collection of stories "Children's Gallery", which included stories about Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Tigger and others, appeared a year later. As Alan Milne himself said, he did not have to invent anything, he just watched his own son and his games.
Christopher Robin himself gave his father ideas for future stories. The first complete book about the teddy bear and his friends was published in 1926, and the second in 1928. The success turned out to be unprecedented, but I did not want to write more about Vinnie Milne, and the son had already grown up. Alas, after the appearance of books for toddlers, they began to look at the author exclusively as a children's writer. Critics scolded other of his works in advance, and readers demanded a continuation. Like Arthur Conan Doyle, who was captured by Sherlock Holmes, Alan Milne found himself in the tenacious paws of a teddy bear, created by him. Until the end of his life, both the writer and his son hated Vinnie. The first for the fact that this character stole a career from him, the second for a stolen childhood.
There was one more person who regretted that he "contacted" Winnie the Pooh - Ernest Sheppard. He, a brilliant cartoonist and fearless war correspondent, was also perceived until the end of his life only as the author of illustrations for children's books.
Probably, neither Milna nor Sheppard were able to appreciate what is obvious to modern readers. Between the two world wars, when empires collapsed and families fell apart, they created a fairy tale free of politics and hints of personal trauma. A fairy tale in which it is warm and cozy, like in a children's room, and that is why readers all over the world love it so much.
Biography
Alan Alexander Milne is an English writer, author of stories about "a bear with sawdust in his head" - Winnie the Pooh. Born in the London borough of Kilburn. He took part in the First World War. For many years he was a contributor to the English comic magazine Punch. Milne began writing stories about Winnie the Pooh for his son Christopher Robin Milne (1920-1996). Before the books about Winnie the Pooh were published, Milne was already a fairly famous playwright, but the success of Winnie the Pooh has acquired such proportions that other works by Milne are now practically unknown.
Milne was born in London. He attended a small private school owned by his father, John Vine Milne. One of his teachers in 1889-1890 was H.G. Wells. Then he entered Westminster School, and then at Trinity College Cambridge, where he studied mathematics from 1900 to 1903. As a student, he wrote notes for the student newspaper Grant. He usually wrote with his brother Kenneth, and they signed the notes with the name AKM. Milne's work was noticed, and the British comic magazine "Punch" began to cooperate with him, later Milne became assistant editor there.
In 1913 Milne married Dorothy "Daphne" de Selincourt.
Milne fought in World War I as an officer in the British Army. He worked for MI7, the propaganda arm of British intelligence. Later he wrote the book Peace with Honor, in which he condemned the war.
In 1920, Milne's only son was born - Christopher Robin Milne.
Artworks
Milne was well known as Punch's feuilletonist, and collections of his essays were regularly reprinted. Milne's plays were popular with both audiences and critics, and for a short time Milne was "one of the most successful, prolific and well-known playwrights in England." However, the success of his children's books overshadowed all other achievements, and, much to Milne's annoyance, he was considered a children's writer. According to Paula T. Connolly, Milne's works for children turned out to be like Frankenstein - the creation took possession of the creator: the public demanded new books in this genre, and critics considered Milne's other works in the context of his children's books. When the writer returned to novels in the 1930s and 1940s, readers ignored him, and critics used references to children's books to stab him more painfully. Milne himself complained that critics who start a review by mentioning Winnie the Pooh inevitably scold new works, the attitude towards which they had developed even before reading. By the end of his life, Milne's children's books had a circulation of 7 million, and his books for adults were no longer reprinted.
Winnie the Pooh
Winnie-the-PoohThe House at Pooh Corner
Translated into Russian - without two chapters of the original - under the general title "Winnie the Pooh and All, All, All" by Boris Zakhoder.
The prototype of the hero of the books was a bear-girl named Winnipeg from Canada, bought in 1914 from a Canadian hunter for $ 20 and rescued by veterinarians. The animal was sent to the London Zoo. In 1924, four-year-old Christopher Robin Milne first saw Winnie the bear and changed the name of his teddy bear in her honor from Edward Bear to Winnie the Pooh. This, in turn, inspired his father to write books about Winnie the Pooh.
Fairy tales
Prince rabbitAn ordinary tale
Once upon a time ...
Ballad of the King's Sandwich
Stories
Truth is in wine (In vino veritas)Christmas story
Stunning story
Mr. Findlater's Dreams
Christmas grandfather
Before the flood
At exactly eleven
Portrait of Lydia
River
The Rise and Fall of Mortimer Scrivens
Pond
Midsummer (June 24)
A word about autumn
I don't like blackmailers
Stories of happy destinies
Novels
Lovers in London (1905)Once on a Time, 1917
Mr. Pim (1921)
The Red House Mystery (1922)
Two (English Two People, 1931)
Very short-lived sensation (eng. Four Days "Wonder, 1933)
It's Too Late Now: The Autobiography of a Writer (1939)
Chloe Marr (1946)
(1882-1956) english writer
Millions of children and adults around the world are familiar with a cute bear named Winnie the Pooh. Alan Alexander Milne composed a tale about him and his friends - piglet Piglet, donkey Eeyore, Tigger, Rabbit and others. There is one more main character in the tale - the little son of the writer Christopher Robin, who became not only a participant in this amazing tale, but, strange as it may seem, one of its authors. And Winnie the Pooh was involved in the story of creating a fairy tale about himself and his friends. After all, this already pretty shabby teddy bear was the favorite toy of the little boy Christopher Robin, who did not part with him all his childhood years.
So Winnie the Pooh became a member of the Milnov family and the protagonist of the tale. In the end, he became so famous that he overshadowed even his creator, who is now known only because he came up with a fairy tale about Winnie the Pooh.
Alan Alexander Milne really did not create anything more significant, despite the fact that he had other works.
He came from a family that was as proud of their ancestry as aristocrats are proud of their noble origins. All members of this family were quite extraordinary people, although they did not differ in gentility. Milne's great-grandfather was a bricklayer and his grandfather was a Presbyterian pastor. He worked as a missionary in Jamaica, then returned to England and founded thirteen schools there,
after which he began to preach again. During his life, he never managed to save even the slightest decent amount to help his son break out into the world. Everything that he earned, he generously distributed to poor people.
The writer's father had a hard time. He worked as an accountant at a confectionery factory, as a mechanic's assistant, then as a teacher's assistant. In the end, he still entered the university, and after graduation he founded his own school. It was a very good educational institution. At one time, the future famous writer Herbert Wells worked as a teacher. She and Alan Milne's father remained friends all their lives. Wells later recalled Milne in his Autobiography Experience.
Milne Sr. tried to give his son Alan Alexander a good education. Alan studied at the closed Westminster School, graduated from the mathematics department of the University of Cambridge. During his studies, he edited the university magazine "Grant" and published his own humorous essays there. Milne liked literary work more than mathematics, so after graduating from university he decided to devote himself to literature. However, it turned out to be not easy to publish your works in some serious edition. It happened that the editors did not even read the manuscripts that Milne handed to the editorial offices of the magazines.
Therefore, he could not believe his own eyes when one day he saw his parody of "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" published in Vanity Fair magazine.
And yet, the works of Alan Alexander Milne, although not often, appeared in magazines, and his name became famous. In 1906, he became editor of Punch magazine and thus got the opportunity to print his works without hindrance. His business was finally getting better. Milne married and soon released his Punch magazine humoresques as a separate book.
During the First World War, he served in a reserve communications battalion, then went to the front, but fell ill, and was returned to England. For a time, Alan Milne was an instructor at a training camp, then worked in the propaganda department of the War Department, from where he was demobilized after the war with the rank of lieutenant.
During the war, he began to engage in drama. First, he wrote a play for the amateur troupe of the communications battalion, and then began to create plays for professional theaters. After the war, Milne became a famous writer and playwright. His comedies were a success in theaters, and the detective novel The Mystery of the Red House was even considered a classic.
In 1920, a son, Christopher, was born into the family of Alan Milne. When the boy was one year old, he was presented with a teddy bear named Winnie the Pooh. Then Christopher got a toy donkey Eeyore and a piglet Piglet. Later this company was supplemented by Kanga and Tiger, and Milne invented Owl and Rabbit for a fairy tale.
Christopher grew up, and real performances were played out in the nursery, in which all family members took part - father, mother, little son and his toys, which in the fairy tale behaved like living beings.
For his son, Alan Alexander Milne began to write children's books. At first it was poetry, and then "Winnie the Pooh" appeared. It turned out like this.
At the very beginning of the twenties, a friend of Alana Milnov opened a children's magazine and asked Milne to write several poems for him. The writer refused, but nevertheless began to think that such he could write. As a result, the poem "Sonya and the Doctor" and other poems appeared, which in 1924 were published as a separate book.
And then Milne remembered all the tales that he told his son, and began to write them down. In 1926, the first book "Winnie the Pooh" was published, which included ten stories about a bear cub and his friends.
In 1927, a new book of children's poetry by Alan Milne appeared, and in 1928 - the book "House on the Pooh Edge", which included ten more stories about Winnie the Pooh. Thus, the first book about this wonderful bear cub was published when Christopher was three years old, and the last when he was already eight years old. In 1925, Milne acquired a large farmhouse with services and a large forest of 200 hectares - Cochford Farm, where the story was mainly set.
Alan Alexander Milne wrote other works for his son. He has published a collection of "Stories about Christopher Robin", "A book to read about Christopher Robin", "Birthday stories about Christopher Robin" and even such an entertaining book as "The Alphabet of Christopher Robin." In addition to these, he wrote other small children's works.
However, Alan Milne did not write about Winnie the Pooh. He even got angry when asked about it, and said: "If a person once wrote about a policeman, they will demand that he write only about policemen all his life."
Everything was explained by the fact that Christopher grew up and Milne stopped composing fairy tales for him. And for some reason he did not want to compose them for other children. But this was a mistake of the writer, because his other works were no longer successful.
In 1938, the theatrical production of Milne's Sarah Simple was a complete failure. After that, he stopped writing for the theater. Gradually, readers lost interest in the writer's humorous works, and the Punch magazine, where Milne was again invited to work, even refused his services. In 1939, Alan Alexander Milne wrote his autobiography, but after a brief success, it was forgotten too.
Literary fortune left Alan Milne when he was only forty-eight years old. Soon his name began to be mentioned only as the author of "Winnie the Pooh". In this capacity, he is known to this day.
Winnie the Pooh and All, All, All is a typical family fairy tale that parents usually come up with for their young children. Moreover, it reflects the cases and situations that actually happened in the Milnov family, only they were played out by the animated toys of Christopher Robin and himself.
The son of the writer Christopher Milne, to whom one of the most wonderful children's works is dedicated, became a shopkeeper. At first he was engaged in the grocery and haberdashery trade, and then he opened a bookstore and began to prosper. At the age of 54, he published his own book, Enchanted Places, in which he spoke about his childhood.
Then he published another book - "The Road through the Trees", where he again talked about his life, but already an adult. True, both of these books did not have much success and were interesting only because their author was involved in the creation of a wonderful tale about the bear Winnie the Pooh and his friends.
Alan Alexander Milne was born in London in 1882. His father was the head of a small private school, in which H.G. Wells taught at one time. After graduating from Cambridge University, where (like Carroll) studied mathematics, Milne began working as a journalist. At twenty-four, he became deputy editor-in-chief of the famous comic magazine Punch, and published his essays there weekly.
But the real world fame (unexpectedly for himself) was brought to Milne by books for children.
Milne began with poetry, because in Winnie the Pooh's opinion, it is not you who find poetry, but you. Written as a joke and published at the insistence of his wife, the children's poem soon became very popular. The first book of poems also had a great resonance. And the famous Winnie the Pooh saga made Milne a classic.
And for the first time a Russian reader was introduced to the famous Milnov hero and his friends by the wonderful poet and translator Boris Zakhoder - in 1960.
http://www.litru.ru
Poetry
About son:
My Robin doesn't walk
As people -
Top-top, -
And rushing skipping
Gallop -
Gop-gop! ..
A playful poem " Tails"- about the intention of a little boy to acquire an" excellent tail ":
I said to the lion, the cat, the camel:
- I will not envy you.
See, from now on
I also got a tail.
Swing song
It's easy on the swing
I fly higher and higher:
Far away from me
Attic or roof!
I see an oak top
And the field in the distance:
I probably became
Lord of the earth!
And the lord of heaven
I would really,
If only a little higher
The swing took off!
Oh, just a minute -
And soared to the sun!
But somehow they
Going down ...
Fur bear
And if, like a bear,
I'm all overgrown with fur -
I would not watch
Into the snow and frost!
Frosty or blizzard
Blizzard or snowy -
There is no need to worry
When dressed bearishly!
I would wear a big fur hood
In fur mittens (on each hand),
And in a big fur jacket (on the sides),
And in big fur boots (on the legs).
Covered with a fur blanket,
All winter I would sleep in a fur bed!
———————
"Tails".
The lion and the whale have a tail,
Crocadile and elephant;
Fluffy, long, in scales,
And with a tassel at the end.
Birds, animals and fish have a tail.
How can I get it?
Give me the address of the super store
Where there is a showcase all in the tails.
I will spend my last penny
I'll buy a tail to make it look like
To a crocodile and a whale,
On a lion, a huge elephant.
Look, animals, fish, birds!
You can't compare with my tail!
(Thank you so much for the excellent translation)
Alexander Alan Milne (A.A. Milne, 1882-1956) is a famous British writer, playwright, poet and publicist. The general public is known as the author of children's poems and fairy tales about Winnie the Pooh, which have become classics of world literature. They have been successfully filmed in many countries of the world, including Russia. Alan Milne has written many plays that have been staged in theaters in New York, Chicago, Manchester, Liverpool.
Childhood and youth
Alexander Alan Milne was born on January 18, 1882 in London in the Kilburn area. His father, John Milne, was a teacher by education, and owned a small private school, where his son studied. As a child, Alan felt jealous of his older brother, to whom, as it seemed to him, his mother paid more attention. This will affect the future life of the writer, in which he will constantly prove that he is worthy of the love of others.
The famous science fiction writer H. Wells was among the boy's mentors. After completing his studies, he enters Westminster School, after which he comprehends the secrets of mathematics at Trinity College for three years.
From a young age, the future writer became interested in writing, and the family helped him in every possible way in his creative development, which did not fail to affect the future. In his student years, Alexander, together with his brother Kenneth, under the pseudonym AKM, wrote short notes, verses and fairy tales for the "Grant" studio newspaper.
Carier start
The brothers' works were so in demand that soon Alan felt confident in his abilities and sent his work to the humorous publication "Punch", popular in Foggy Albion. But, to my deep disappointment, his work was not accepted.
Soon Milne sent another piece - a parody of Sherlock Holmes - to Vanity Fair magazine, where it was published, to the surprise of the author. After that, he will say: "The first appearance of my initials in a magazine ... filled me with some kind of shame."
Then public fame for a modest young man was still a wonder.
At 24, Milne's dream came true. He became a full-time contributor to Punch magazine. His name began to appear on the pages of the publication weekly, and orders are scheduled months in advance. Sparkling subtle humor, expressed in poetry and prose, bribed the reader, forcing him to sincerely laugh at the characters.
In 1914, the First World War began. Opponent of war, Alan Milne volunteered for the front, deeply convinced that this war would end all other conflicts. Disgusted with what is happening, he writes at the front at night to distract himself from the flow of blood and dead bodies. Under these conditions, the writer's first military work, "Wurzel's Chatter", was born. In memory of this period of life, 20 years later, the book "Peace with Honor" was written, imbued with pacifist sentiments.
After returning from the war, Milne embarks on an independent voyage, completely surrendering to his own plays. In 1921 he wrote the play "Mr. Pin Passes By", staged on theatrical stages in many English and American cities. In the wake of success, a year later, Alan writes the novel "The Mystery of the Red House", which was named by one of the critics the best detective of all time.
In 1923, the family moved to North Wales for the summer, but because of the endless rains, the writer spends hours in the gazebo, peering into the sky and looking for inspiration. This is how a collection of children's poems called "When we were very little" appeared, published in record print runs. He wrote it about his son and for his son. True, later in his memoirs, Christopher Robin will say that his father relied in the creation of his works not on personal experience of communicating with a child, which simply did not exist, but on general ideas. And indeed it is. In the family, all the issues of raising a son were entrusted to the boy's beloved nanny.
The flourishing of a creative career
In October 1926, a book about Winnie the Pooh, a cheerful bear cub with sawdust in his head, was published for the first time in Britain. The author did not expect at all that she would make a real sensation and his name would at once become known throughout the country. A rare newspaper did not publish a photo of the famous and successful writer. Soon, in an interview, Milne will say: "I think that each of us dreams of immortality."
As Alexander later explained, he meant the preservation of his name in the people's memory.
Translated into many languages, the book excited the minds of publishers, and they demanded to continue. Milne just needed money to treat his brother Ken, who had tuberculosis. After some persuasion, the fairy tale "The House on the Pooh Edge" was written, which was the last in this cycle.
He adapted the work of Milna B. Zakhoder into Russian, who managed to accurately convey the colorful image of a good-natured bear. Despite the popular love for Winnie the Pooh, there was a man who hated this character. It turned out to be the hero of the fairy tale himself - the son of the writer Christopher, who claimed that she had darkened his life. Yes, and Alan himself has repeatedly admitted that more than once he really wanted to hide from this glory.
After the death of his beloved brother Ken, in 1929, Milne writes a new play "Michael and Mary", dedicated to the memory of a close relative. Two years later, it will be staged on stage in New York. As it turned out, this was the last major success in the author's creative career.
After the outbreak of World War II, Alan and his family moved to his estate, where he often imagined his childhood, his parents, his beloved brother. The idea of writing his own autobiography, which he will call "Too Late," is born in the mind of the writer, imbued with warm memories of his brother.
Personal life
In 1913, at one of the parties, Alexander meets Dorothy de Selincourt, who was the goddaughter of the editor of "Punch" O. Seeman. Gaining strength and overcoming eternal timidity, he invited the girl to dance and lost his head from love. The next day, the writer proposed to get married and received consent.
It turns out that Daphne (as her relatives called her) had read the works of her future husband published in the Punch magazine more than once, and knew him in absentia. Assessing this fact, Milne will say: "She had ... the best sense of humor in the world."
However, over time, it turns out that their marriage is far from perfect. Dorothy's complex and headstrong nature, coupled with her fanatical passion for the garden, due to which she paid little attention to her husband, created a deep rift in the relationship. Despite this, in 1920 the couple had their only son, Christopher Robin. As it turned out, his birth seriously influenced the creative destiny of his father.
In 1931, Daphne left Milne and moved to live with an American. Years later, she will return to her husband without meeting a single reproach from him.
In 1952, the writer suffered a severe stroke from which he was never able to recover. On January 31, 1956, Alan Milne died in London after a long illness. In 1961, Daphne, to the great disappointment of her own son, sold the rights to works about Winnie the Pooh to Walt Disney.
