In a later edition he claimed not to know whether it was a children's book or an adults'. In 1929 he dramatized Kenneth Grahame's
The Wind in the Willows, which had to wait until 1930 for its first performance. Milne's solid reputation was built on the four children's books; already in the 1930s interest in his plays for adults began to wane, while response to the children's books swelled, somewhat to Milne's chagrin. In 1952 Milne suffered a stroke. He died in 1956 at age seventy-four.
Milne never quite understood how the four thin books he had written for children could have catapulted him into long-lasting fame, while his major works for adults had brought him only short-lived recognition. Describing in his autobiography, It's Too Late Now: The Autobiography of a Writer (1939), the embarrassment he felt at being considered only a writer for children, Milne observes:
It is easier in England to make a reputation than to lose one. I wrote four "Children's books," containing altogether, I suppose, 70,000 words--the number of words in the average-length novel. Having said good-bye to all that in 70,000 words, knowing that as far as I was concerned the mode was outmoded, I gave up writing children's books.
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