A. A. Milne - Happy Days: Margery, The Knight Of The Chimney Piece

HAPPY DAYS.....
Although best known for his Winnie the Pooh stories, A.A. Milne spent years as an editor at the English humor magazine Punch. These sprightly essays were chosen from the hundreds he wrote during that period. As usual, they are funny, wry, and poke fun at almost all of our human foibles. There are six short one act plays that he wrote to demonstrate the six allowable plots for amateur playwrights and they are absolutely hilarious. The other topics run the gamut from dogs to dates.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY.....
Alan Alexander Milne (January 18, 1882 – January 31, 1956) was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie the Pooh and for various poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work. Milne served in both World Wars, joining the British Army in World War I, and was a captain of the British Home Guard in World War II. Alan Alexander Milne was born in Kilburn, London to parents John Vince Milne, who was Scottish and Sarah Marie Milne (née Heginbotham) and grew up at Henley House School, 6/7 Mortimer Road (now Crescent), Kilburn, a small public school run by his father. One of his teachers was H. G. Wells, who taught there in 1889–90. Milne attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied on a mathematics scholarship, graduating with a B.A. in Mathematics in 1903. While there, he edited and wrote for Granta, a student magazine. He collaborated with his brother Kenneth and their articles appeared over the initials AKM. Milne's work came to the attention of the leading British humour magazine Punch, where Milne was to become a contributor and later an assistant editor. Milne played for the amateur English cricket team the Allahakbarries alongside authors J. M. Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Milne joined the British Army in World War I and served as an officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and later, after a debilitating illness, the Royal Corps of Signals. He was commissioned into the 4th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment on February 17, 1915 as a second lieutenant (on probation). His commission was confirmed on December 20, 1915. On July 7, 1916, he was injured while serving in the Battle of the Somme and invalided back to England. Having recuperated, he was recruited into Military Intelligence to write propaganda articles for MI 7b between 1916 and 1918. He was discharged on February 14, 1919 and settled in Mallord Street, Chelsea. He relinquished his commission on February 19, 1920, retaining the rank of lieutenant.

Milne is most famous for his two Pooh books about a boy named Christopher Robin after his son, Christopher Robin Milne, 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-the-Pooh" 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 called "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, two more characters, Rabbit and Owl, were created by Milne's imagination. Christopher Robin Milne's own toys are now under glass in New York where seven hundred and fifty thousand people visit them every year.

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