1903 to 1925 After graduating from Cambridge University in 1903, A. A. Milne contributed humorous verse and whimsical essays to
Punch, joining the staff in 1906 and becoming an assistant editor. During this period he published 18 plays and three novels, including the murder mystery
The Red House Mystery (1922). His son was born in August 1920 and in 1924 Milne produced a collection of children's poems,
When We Were Very Young, which were illustrated by
Punch staff cartoonist
E. H. Shepard. A collection of short stories for children
A Gallery of Children, and other stories that became part of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, were first published in 1925. Milne was an early screenwriter for the nascent British film industry, writing four stories filmed in 1920 for the company Minerva Films (founded in 1920 by the actor
Leslie Howard and his friend and story editor
Adrian Brunel). These were
The Bump, starring
Aubrey Smith;
Twice Two;
Five Pound Reward; and
Bookworms. Some of these films survive in the archives of the
British Film Institute. Milne had met Howard when the actor starred in Milne's play
Mr Pim Passes By in London. Looking back on this period (in 1926), Milne observed that when he told his agent that he was going to write a detective story, he was told that what the country wanted from a "
Punch humorist" was a humorous story; when two years later he said he was writing nursery rhymes, his agent and publisher were convinced he should write another detective story; and after another two years, he was being told that writing a detective story would be in the worst of taste given the demand for children's books. He concluded that "the only excuse which I have yet discovered for writing anything is that I want to write it; and I should be as proud to be delivered of a Telephone Directory
con amore as I should be ashamed to create a Blank Verse Tragedy at the bidding of others."
1926 to 1928 , 1926. Milne is most famous for his two
Pooh books about a boy named
Christopher Robin after his son,
Christopher Robin Milne (1920–1996), and various characters inspired by his son's stuffed animals, most notably the bear named
Winnie-the-Pooh. Christopher Robin Milne's stuffed bear, originally named Edward, was renamed Winnie after a Canadian
black bear named
Winnie (after
Winnipeg), which was used as a military mascot in World War I, and left to
London Zoo during the war. "The Pooh" comes from a
swan the young Milne named "Pooh".
E. H. Shepard illustrated the original Pooh books, using his own son's teddy Growler ("a magnificent bear") as the model. The rest of Christopher Robin Milne's toys,
Piglet,
Eeyore, Kanga, Roo and
Tigger, were incorporated into A. A. Milne's stories, Not yet known as Pooh, he made his first appearance in a poem, "Teddy Bear", published in
Punch magazine in February 1924 and republished that year in
When We Were Very Young. Pooh first appeared in the
London Evening News on Christmas Eve, 1925, in a story called "The Wrong Sort of Bees".
Winnie-the-Pooh was published in 1926, followed by
The House at Pooh Corner in 1928. A second collection of nursery rhymes,
Now We Are Six, was published in 1927. All four books were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. Milne also published four plays in this period. He also "gallantly stepped forward" to contribute a quarter of the costs of dramatising P. G. Wodehouse's
A Damsel in Distress.
The World of Pooh won the
Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958.
1929 onward The success of his children's books was to become a source of considerable annoyance to Milne, whose self-avowed aim was to write whatever he pleased and who had, until then, found a ready audience for each change of direction: he had freed pre-war
Punch from its ponderous facetiousness; he had made a considerable reputation as a playwright (like his idol
J. M. Barrie) on both sides of the Atlantic; he had produced a witty piece of detective writing in
The Red House Mystery (although this was severely criticised by
Raymond Chandler for the implausibility of its plot in his essay
The Simple Art of Murder in the eponymous collection that appeared in 1950). But once Milne had, in his own words, "said goodbye to all that in 70,000 words" (the approximate length of his four principal children's books), he had no intention of producing any reworkings lacking in originality, given that one of the sources of inspiration, his son, was growing older. Another reason Milne stopped writing children's books, and especially about Winnie-the-Pooh, was that he felt "amazement and disgust" over the immense fame his son was exposed to, and said that "I feel that the legal Christopher Robin has already had more publicity than I want for him. I do not want CR Milne to ever wish that his name were Charles Robert." In 1929, Milne adapted
Kenneth Grahame's novel
The Wind in the Willows for the stage as
Toad of Toad Hall. The title was an implicit admission that such chapters as Chapter 7, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn," could not survive translation to the theatre. A special introduction written by Milne is included in some editions of Grahame's novel. It was first performed at the
Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool, on 21 December 1929 before it made its
West End debut the following year at the
Lyric Theatre on 17 December 1930. The play was revived in the West End from 1931 to 1935, and since the 1960s there have been West End revivals during the Christmas season; actors who have performed in the play include
Judi Dench and
Ian McKellen. Milne and his wife became estranged from their son, who came to resent what he saw as his father's exploitation of his childhood and came to hate the books that had thrust him into the public eye. Christopher's marriage to his first cousin, Lesley de Sélincourt, distanced him still further from his parents – Lesley's father and Christopher's mother had not spoken to each other for 30 years. ==Death and legacy==