Friday, June 21, 2013

A.A. Milne

Not many people would think of the man who created Winnie-the-Pooh as a mystery writer during it's Golden Age... yet he was. Sensation as the inquest reporters would write! A.A. Milne went to a private school run by his father where one of his teachers just happened to be H.G. Wells. When he went up to Cambridge with his brother Kenneth, they collaborated on articles for a local student magazine. His writing soon came to the attention of Punch magazine, where he joined the staff in 1906. But then the war intervened. After illness made him leave his regiment, he ended up working with Military Intelligence.

Once the war ended, he resumed his writing career, defying anyone to complain about what genre he was to write in next. He had a ready audience for whatever new direction he took, and one of those directions was to write a murder mystery during the height of the Golden Age of Detection. Of course, after the success of The Red House Mystery, his editor asked if he would write more mysteries, to which Milne responded but taking up a pen and writing When We Were Very Young, which contained the first appearance of Winnie-the-Pooh. While he attempted to regain his versatility of writing, he would forever be known as the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh to his annoyance... so here's to a secret gem of the Golden Age of Crime Detection in the guise of a famous children's author.

0 comments:

Newer Post Older Post Home