Alan Alexander Milne (Author)

Alan Milne spent his childhood in London, where his father was a preparatory schoolmaster. His early education owed much to the skills of a young teacher and mentor -- H.G. Wells -- years later, Milne described Wells as "a great writer and a great friend." He continued his education at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He bequethed his original handwritten manuscripts of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House At Pooh Corner to the College Library. While an undergraduate at Cambridge he edited Granta for a year -- his first literary efforts were published in the humourous magazine Punch, where a month after his twenty-fourth birthday he started work as Assistant Editor, remaining there until the outbreak of the First World War.

A.A. Milne always acknowledged that it was his wife, Daphne, and his young son, Christopher Robin, who inspired him to write the poems and stories. History has a strange way of mixing fact and fiction, but, whatever the origins, the four Pooh books printed in over twenty-five languages have taken their rightful place in the hearts and on the bookshelves of many millions of people.

In Which We are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees and the Stories Begin was first printed in the London Evening News on December 24th, 1925 and broadcast by the BBC on Christmas Day by Donald Calthrop.

Winnie-the-Pooh was published by Methuen on October 14th, 1926; but for too long, Milne's four classics have been relegated to children's bookshelves and Disney children's cartoons.

The Pooh books are firm favourites with old and young alike and have been translated into almost every known language -- in a national reader's poll carried out in England by England premier booksellers, Waterstone's, and Channel 4 Television during 1996, Winnie-the-Pooh was placed number 17 in the list of the 100 most-popular books published during the 20th century.

The Pooh books are favourites with old and young alike and have been translated into almost every language. In 1985, the Russian translation, Vinnie Pookh, sold more than three and a half million copies in the Soviet Union and, in the same year, the Latin version, Winnie Ille Pu, became the first book in a foreign language to be included in the bestseller list in the United States. There is now a companion volume, A. A. Milnei Domus Anguli Puensis, Librum exornavit E. H. Shepard, Liber alter de Urso Puo de anglico sermone in Latinum conversus auctore Briano Staplesio, Londinii: Sumptibus Methueni, MCMLXXX.

Before the success of the Pooh books, Alan Milne was a popular dramatist, novelist, and humourist and many of his plays were performed to great critical acclaim in both Europe and America. Today, his plays are rarely performed in the professional theatre, although amateur productions are playing in almost every English-speaking country throughout the world where they still attract large and eager audiences.

Milne's plays include:
Worzel-Flummery, The Lucky One, The Boy Comes Home, Belinda, The Red Feathers, Make-Believe, Mr. Pim Passes By, The Camberley Triangle, The Romantic Age, The Stepmother, The Dover Road, The Truth about Blayds, The Great Broxopp Success, The Man in the Bowler Hat, To Have the Honour -- or Meet the Prince, Ariadne, Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers, Miss Marlow at Play, The Ivory Door, Toad of Toad Hall, The Fourth Wall -- or The Perfect Alibi, Michael and Mary, Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers, Other People's Lives, Miss Elizabeth Bennett, The Ugly Duckling and Before the Flood.

Soon after the publication of Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne wrote in the Nation: "I suppose that every one of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world, whatever he may be doing, himself, in the next." When he died, thirty years later, there was already no doubt at all that A. A. Milne had achieved more than the ordinary mortal's fifteen minutes of fame -- he had achieved an immortality equalled by few others, though not as he would have wished based on his huge literary output of plays and novels, but rather on the adventures of a Bear of Very Little Brain.

Dr. James W. Rogers

(Book, Music and Lyrics)

has written a number of plays including several commissioned works for both the stage and television. In addition to It's a Wonderful Life, the Musical, A Winnie-the-Pooh Christmas Tail, and the Play version of I'ts a Wonderful Life. Rodgers has directed more then 100 productions for professional, community, university and high school theatres, several with professional actors. With his wife, Wanda, he is co-author of Play Director's Survival Kit. He has been chair of theatre departments at three universities and , for the past 24 years, professor of theatre at the University of Kentucky.