Alan Alexander Milne was born in London in 1882. He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1902 he was Editor of the university magazine, and moved back to London the year after to start work in journalism. By 1906 he was Assistant Editor of Punch, where he stayed until he joined the army in the First World War. While serving in the army he began writing plays. He married Dorothy de Selincourt in 1913 and they 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 detective novel (The Red House Mystery), and light verse, which all attracted great success at the time. He continued to be a prolific writer until his death in 1956.