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  • RLF News
  • Article

Passing on the pen: a writer’s legacy

A.A. Milne by Howard Coster and Arthur Ransome by John Gay
  • 14 January, 2025

143 years ago this week, the author AA Milne was born.

Milne – who was a prolific playwright and poet, as well as a writer of detective stories, an essayist and a screenwriter who created screenplays for four silent films released in the early 1920s – is best-known today as the writer of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. He would have marked his birthday on 18th January, which happens to also be the day another writer renowned for his children’s books, Arthur Ransome, was born, two years after Milne, in 1884.

Ransome was a journalist, short story-writer and non-fiction author. His early works include a book called Six Weeks in Russia in 1919, which detailed some of his experiences living in revolutionary Russia, providing a remarkable insight into the country at a pivotal point in its history.

Like Milne, however, it is Ransome’s later writing for children that is best-known today. His 12-book series Swallows and Amazons charts the escapades of a group of children as they explore the lakes of the UK, including the Norfolk Broads and the Lake District.

Milne’s characters – Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends Tigger, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, Rabbit and, of course, Christopher Robin – also spent much of their time outdoors: the animal’s forest homes in the fictional Hundred Acre Wood were based on the woods of Ashdown Forest, in East Sussex.

But Milne and Ransome share something other than a birth date and an appreciation of inspiring British landscapes. Following their deaths (Milne’s on 31 January 1956, and Ransome’s on 3 June 1967), both authors bequeathed a portion of their estate to us here at the Royal Literary Fund.

In doing so, they and all the other writers who have left money to the RLF – including playwright and novelist W. Somerset Maugham (who was also born this month, 151 years ago on 25th January 1874), as well as children’s writer Margaret Baker, memoirist and artist Sven Berlin, war poet Rupert Brooke, writer and critic GK Chesterton, playwright and novelist Patrick Hamilton, writer Mary Hocking, novelist Ursula Holden, novelist and journalist Colin MacInnnes, poet Henry Reed, playwright NF Simpson, writer Marguerite Steen, translator Anthony Vivis and novelist Angus Wilson – are helping us provide support to professional writers across the UK on an ongoing basis.

They leave behind far more than the words they wrote: their gifts help us to ensure the craft of writing is respected and valued, and that future generations of writers from all genres and backgrounds have opportunities to sustain themselves, and to thrive.

A lasting legacy

One of the main ways the RLF uses the bequests left to us by our writers is through the provision of our hardship grants, which provide professional writers in need of short or long-term assistance with valuable support and financial aid.

Writers to have received a grant from the RLF over the years include Paul Bailey (who died last year at the age of 87), Anna Burns, Margaret Busby, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Joseph Conrad, Elizabeth Jennings, James Joyce, Hanif Kureishi, DH Lawrence, Doris Lessing, Mustapha Matura, Edna O’Brien, Mervyn Peake, Monique Roffey, Ali Smith, Bram Stoker, Dylan Thomas and Antonia White. Many of the letters written in support of their grant applications demonstrate the unpredictability of living a creative life – like Bram Stoker’s 1911 letter, which came 14 years after the publication of his genre-defining horror novel, Dracula.

The need to balance making an income with the time and effort it takes to create work has been a reality of life for writers throughout the centuries, and it’s a fact underlined by the number of writers who, having received support from the RLF during their lifetime, went on to bequeath a portion of their estate to us after their deaths.

Margaret Baker, Mary Hocking, Ursula Holden, Henry Reed, Colin MacInnnes, NF Simpson, Marguerite Steen and Angus Wilson were all one-time RLF grant beneficiaries – and, by making a bequest to the RLF, they have ensured we can continue to support future generations of writers, just as they themselves were once supported.

But whether benefactor, beneficiary or both, every RLF writer is a part of our legacy, and we celebrate them all.

If you would like to find out more about bequeathing a portion of your estate to the RLF, visit our Estates page. For information on grant applications, take a look here.

Photo credit: AA Milne by Howard Coster (left) and Arthur Ransome by John Gay (right).


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