Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit and Tigger - these fairy-tale characters are familiar to millions of children all over the world. Alan Milne wrote one of the most popular children's books, which parents have been reading to their kids for many years. The life story of the writer is no less interesting than his books.
Biography
Alan Alexander Milne was born in London on January 18, 1882. The boy was lucky with his parents, they were well-educated and well-mannered people.
Alan's father had his own private school, and the future writer went to it. Remarkably, one of the teachers there was H. G. Wells, an internationally renowned writer.
The family was very fond of creativity and art and in every possible way encouraged the development of children in this area. From an early age, Milne wrote poetry, and during his student years he and his brother wrote articles for the university newspaper Grant.
After leaving school, Alan entered the Westminster School, and then Cambridge at the Faculty of Mathematics. Despite his creative inclinations, the young man had quite good successes in the exact sciences.
After taking notes and newspaper articles for the student edition, Milne was noticed and invited to London to work for the famous comic magazine Punch. It was a real success, especially for such a young journalist.
Personal life
The future wife Milna noticed the young man as a student. In 1913, Alan Milne and Dorothy de Selincourt were married. The newlyweds were forced to leave a year after the wedding. The First World War broke out and Milne volunteered for the front as an officer in the British army. He took little part in hostilities, for the most part Milne worked in the propaganda department.
After some time, he wrote the book "Peace with Honor", where he directly condemned the war and everything connected with it.
In 1920, the couple had a son, Christopher Robin. And in 1925, Milne buys a house in Hartfield and transports his family there.
Alan Milne has lived a fairly long and successful life. The writer died in 1956 from a serious brain disease.
Literary activity
Milne's first serious literary success was the stories he wrote during the war. The author gained popularity and began to be called one of the most successful playwrights in England.
But, undoubtedly, the world-wide fame of the writer was brought by the cheerful idiot bear nicknamed Winnie the Pooh. As Milne later stated, he did not intentionally conceive the fairy tale, but simply transferred the funny stories about his son's toys to paper.
Christopher was given toys, and before going to bed, the writer dad, instead of reading fairy tales, invented and told his son stories about the fun adventures of his toy friends.
In addition, the family often staged children's performances with Christopher's toys. This is how the kind fairy tale about Vinnie's adventures was born, which children all over the world learned and fell in love with.
Remarkably, fairytale characters appeared in the book exactly in the order in which their prototype toys appeared in the life of Milne's son. And the forest in which the heroes lived was very much like the forest in which the Milnov family loved to walk.
The first chapters of the book about the adventures of a funny bear cub in 1924 were published in the newspaper. Readers were delighted with the fairy tale and began to ask for the continuation of the story. And in 1926 the first book about Winnie the Pooh and his friends was published.
After the release of the book, Alan Milne was struck by crazy fame. The tale was translated into many languages, it was constantly reprinted and filmed.
Walt Disney directed a full-length cartoon about the funny bear Winnie.
In Russia, Soyuzmultfilm also released its own version of this tale. The audience fell in love with the cartoon, and it became a classic of the children's genre.
However, Alan Milne himself suffered greatly from this work. The fairy tale literally closed the way for the writer to the world of serious literature, and all his further works had neither success nor recognition from literary critics.
Almost all of Milne's stories, poems and plays were forgotten, unable to compete with a children's fairy tale. Although the author himself did not consider himself a children's writer.
What is noteworthy from the fairy tale so beloved by all, Milne's son also suffered. The boy in childhood was pretty much bullied by his peers and did not allow him to live in peace.
Despite this, Alan Milne has forever entered the golden fund of literature to this day, parents read stories to their children about a funny bear cub and his friends.
