Education: A Man Who Hated Whimsy

"If I write anything less realistic, less straightforward than 'the cat sat on the mat,'" A. A. Milne (rhymes with kiln) once complained, "I am [called] whimsical." To Alan Alexander Milne, whimsical was the most "loathsome adjective," but it was one that he could never escape. No matter how many adult plays and novels he wrote, he was forever the biographer of Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh. On starting one of his children's books. Critic Dorothy Parker once reported that on page five "Tonstant Weader fwowed up." Milne's other readers had an entirely different...

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