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Winnie-the-Pooh returns in the first authorized sequel to The House At Pooh Corner | By David Benedictus | Decorations By Mark Burgess

Meet the Authors and Illustrators

Alan Alexander Milne

1882 - 1956

Alan Alexander Milne is best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh.

A. A. Milne 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 the following year moved back to London to enter journalism. By 1906 he was Assistant Editor of Punch, a post which he held until he joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment at the beginning of the First World War. He left the army in 1919 and began to write plays, the best known of them being Mr. Pim Passes By, The Dover Road, The Truth About Blayds, Michael and Mary, and an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows-Toad of Toad Hall.

He married Dorothy Selincourt (known as Daphne) in 1913 and they had one son, Christopher Robin. Already a successful playwright, the first of Milne’s four books for children, When We Were Very Young, a book of poems written for his son, was published in 1924. 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). These books have been translated into very many different languages (approximately 40 at the last count) and continue to grow in popularity.

Milne’s other works ranged from novels to volumes of essays and from detective stories to light verse, and he continued to be a prolific writer until his death in 1956.

Christopher Robin Milne’s own toys are now under glass in New York.

Ernest H. Shepard

E. H. Shepard is best known as the illustrator of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories by A. A. Milne and The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Born in London in 1879, Shepard won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Art and became a prominent cartoonist for Punch Magazine.

Introduced to A. A. Milne, he agreed to illustrate the Pooh stories, but based his drawings of the bear not on Christopher Robin’s toy, but on Growler, the much-loved bear belonging to his own son, Graham.

Shepard died in 1976. His drawings in pencil, pen and ink are now highly sought after, those of Winnie-the-Pooh in particular selling for record prices of tens of thousands of pounds.

David Benedictus

Writer David Benedictus adapted and produced the audio adaptations of Winnie-the-Pooh starring Dame Judi Dench, Stephen Fry, and Jane Horrocks. His second novel was filmed by Francis Ford Coppola. He has worked as assistant to Trevor Nunn at the RSC, was Commissioning Editor for Drama series at Channel 4, and ran the Book at Bedtime for BBC Radio.

Mark Burgess

Illustrator Mark Burgess has illustrated countless classic children’s characters, including Paddington Bear and Winnie-the-Pooh. He also designs greetings cards, websites, animations, and special warm places for his cat to sleep.