Almanac of Story Tellers: A.A. Milne

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 18th.

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    It is the 18th day of the year, leaving 347 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1882, the English author A.A. Milne was born in London. He told children's stories  through his Winnie the Pooh character, and the 100 Acre Wood -- based on the Five-Hundred Acre Wood near Milne's house in East Sussex.

    Milne was an accomplished playwright and poet when he created the Pooh character for his son, Christopher Robin. Yep, the  human in the series is named after Milne's son, which later created hard feelings in the family. Indeed, most of the characters are based on and named after the stuffed animals (seen at right) the younger Milne played with.

    And while Christopher Robin Milne also had a stuffed bear named Winnie, the title character in the books actually was named after a bear at the London Zoo. Pooh came after a swan Christopher named.

    Milne's introduction of the then-unamed Winnie the Pooh came in a poem he wrote in 1924, and republished in his book, When We Were Very Young, the following year. Pooh was named in a Christmas Eve story in 1925. Winnie-the-Pooh, and later, The House at Pooh Corner. with a collection of nursery rhymes, Now We Are Six, were written over the nex few years. All were illustrated by E.H. Shepherd. 

    After that, Milne was done with Winnie the Pooh and children's stories. He did not enjoy that his son had received so much attention because of the books, and because the boy was growing older, Milne felt he had run out of original material. He returned to writing plays, poems, and mystery novels. 

    But his heirs sold the rights to his charcters to the Walt Disney Co., which has used them in comics, cartoons, and animated stories, continuing to this day. 

    Milne died in 1956 at his home in England.