The Day's Play by A. A. Milne
Published 1910: First Edition Published September, 1910, Second Edition, Published December, 1910 / Hardcover / Very Good Condition
Original red cloth with gilt titles on the cover and spine. 306 + clean and bright pages, previous owners signature on the first free page dated Xmas, 1910. Boards slightly rubbed and faded with time consistent with age.
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The English author A.A. Milne is best known for his two books about the adventures of Christopher Robin and his toy animals: Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Kanga, Roo, Rabbit, Owl, and Eeyore. The books’ setting is the Hundred Acre Wood.
Oh, my friends, how delightful to have been alive in the 1900s and 1910s with a subscription to Punch! What pleasure those readers had at their fingertips each week, opening their copies to find new pieces signed A.A.M.! I may have missed the glory days of Punch by more than a few years, but at least I can still read the work of my favourite of its contributors in collections like The Day’s Play by A.A. Milne from 1910. This is the earliest of the four volumes of his Punch pieces and, having read so much of his work from the late 1910s and onwards this year, it is amazing to see how defined his style already was at this time.
The Day’s Play begins with the introduction of the Rabbits. I adore the Rabbits, a group of young people whose adventures Milne chronicled over the years as they caroused, married, and reproduced (my favourite piece from Once a Week – “The Heir” – was about the Rabbits). Though some of the Rabbits are apparently employed, the stories generally catch up with them on the weekend, when they gather at some place or another to entertain us and one another with their frivolous little speeches, endless games, and good humour. My only quarrel is that there is perhaps an excess of cricket talk in these pieces, most of which I could not remotely follow; all my knowledge of cricket comes from P.G. Wodehouse and now Milne, so I know nothing of rules but quite a lot about chats in the interval. But the characters, despite their perverse and incomprehensible recreations, are delightful in their ability to make every activity and every conversation fun. Our narrator, when cornered by his host’s fiancée, gives a typically Rabbit-like recitation (largely falsified) of her future husband’s virtues:
The Day’s Play – A.A. Milne
October 3, 2012 by Claire (The Captive Reader)
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