The day's play

by A.A. Milne

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Nook

First published September 29, 2009

About the author

Alan Alexander Milne (pronounced /ˈmɪln/) was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems.

A. A. Milne was born in Kilburn, London, to parents Vince Milne 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. 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 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 discharged on February 14, 1919.

After the war, he wrote a denunciation of war titled Peace with Honour (1934), which he retracted somewhat with 1940's War with Honour. During World War II, Milne was one of the most prominent critics of English writer P. G. Wodehouse, who was captured at his country home in France by the Nazis and imprisoned for a year. Wodehouse made radio broadcasts about his internment, which were broadcast from Berlin. Although the light-hearted broadcasts made fun of the Germans, Milne accused Wodehouse of committing an act of near treason by cooperating with his country's enemy. Wodehouse got some revenge on his former friend by creating fatuous parodies of the Christopher Robin poems in some of his later stories, and claiming that Milne "was probably jealous of all other writers.... But I loved his stuff."

He married Dorothy "Daphne" de Sélincourt in 1913, and their only son, Christopher Robin Milne, was born in 1920. In 1925, A. A. Milne bought a country home, Cotchford Farm, in Hartfield, East Sussex. During World War II, A. A. Milne was Captain of the Home Guard in Hartfield & Forest Row, insisting on being plain 'Mr. Milne' to the members of his platoon. He retired to the farm after a stroke and brain surgery in 1952 left him an invalid and by August 1953 "he seemed very old and disenchanted".

He was 74 years old when he passed away in 1956.

Reviews

[Tabitha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book consists of seven parts in which Milne's Punch articles are categorized. Now I don't know much about cricket and I didn't understand all of the first part of this book, but I still enjoyed reading it. Yet I thought the rest of the book was more enjoyable. If you like Milne's sense of humour, you will like this book and you won't be too annoyed by the awful layout of the epub provided for free by the internet archive.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was brought up of Milne's children's books, but until now had never sought out his work for older readers. And after reading "The Day's Play", I really am at a bit of a loss as to what to say of it. Like the proverbial curate's egg, it is good in parts. It's definitely a product of its times, and at its best (such as in the "Letters to Charles" and the theatrical performance which takes up the second half of "The Rabbits" it zips and sparkles along like fine Wodehouse. Some of the other sections, however, seem a bit forced, and - even for a cricket tragic like me - the emphasis on the Summer Game in several of the stories becomes tedious pretty quickly. The star rating then, becomes variable depending on what you want. if you're an aficionado of the slight nonsensical whimsy which brought Jeeves and Wooster into the world, you can push the rating up a star, or even two. If you dislike sport and have little interest in the social mores of the Edwardian era, then drop it to two.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this, but not quite as much as the other collections of Milne's. There are longer sketches here and a lot of talk of cricket, which I never quite understand. I did think the bit about the play was hilarious and the letters between Milne and his baby niece made me crack up.

[Joshua Ingersoll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic little book of snarky shorts. It helps to know a little about cricket.