Milne worked as a playwright and Punch magazine contributor before writing the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, inspired by his son Christopher Robin's stuffed bear. Published beginning in 1926, the tales of Pooh, Piglet, and the Hundred Acre Wood became a global publishing phenomenon, later expanded enormously by Disney adaptations that made the honey-loving bear a permanent fixture of childhood.
Before Pooh, Milne had a respectable career writing West End comedies and serving on the staff of Punch, England's premier humor magazine. He fought in World War I at the Battle of the Somme, an experience that left him, like many veterans, deeply committed to pacifism afterward.
The character emerged almost by accident: Milne's son Christopher Robin owned a stuffed bear named after a real Canadian black bear, Winnipeg, kept at the London Zoo, combined with a swan named Pooh. Illustrator E.H. Shepard modeled Pooh's look partly on his own son's teddy bear rather than Christopher Robin's actual toy.
Milne grew to resent being typecast as a children's author, feeling it overshadowed his other work, and Christopher Robin himself later wrote candidly about the discomfort of childhood fame. Yet the stories' gentle, philosophical whimsy—Pooh's simple appetite for honey, Eeyore's gloom, Piglet's anxiety—proved durable enough to become one of the best-selling literary properties in history.
Key people: A. A. Milne