It's Too Late Now: The Autobiography of a Writer

Description

In It's Too Late Now: The Autobiography of a Writer, A. A Milne, with his characteristic self-deprecating humour, recalls a blissfully happy childhood in the company of his brothers and writes with touching affection about his father whom he adored. From Westminster School he won a scholarship to Cambridge University where he edited the university magazine, Granta. He then went out into the world, determined to be a writer. He was assistant editor at Punch Magazine and enjoyed great success with his novels, plays and stories. And of course he is best remembered for his children's novels and verses featuring Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin. This is both an account of how a writer was formed and a charming period piece on literary life - Milne met countless famous authors including H. G. Wells, J.M Barrie of Peter Pan fame and Rudyard Kipling.

A. A. Milne (Alan Alexander) was born in London in 1882 and educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1902 he was Editor of Granta, the University magazine, and moved back to London the following year to enter journalism. By 1906 he was Assistant Editor of Punch, a post which he held until the beginning of the First World War when he joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. While in the army in 1917 he started on a career writing plays of which his best known are Mr. Pim Passes By, The Dover Road and an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows - Toad of Toad Hall. He married Dorothy de Selincourt in 1913 and in 1920 had a son, Christopher Robin. By 1924 Milne was a highly successful playwright, and published the first of his four books for children, a set of poems called When We Were Very Young, which he wrote for his son. This was followed by the storybook Winnie-the-Pooh in 1926, more poems in Now We Are Six (1927) and further stories in The House at Pooh Corner(1928). In addition to his now famous works, Milne wrote many novels, volumes of essays, a well known detective story The Red House Mystery and light verse, works which attracted great success at the time. He continued to be a prolific writer until his death in 1956.