The Men Who Drew for Boys (and Girls)

This book records the lives and works of 101 "forgotten" illustrators of children's books. For the most part, they worked during what has been called the "Golden Age" of children's book illustration, but while they were contemporaneous with artists such as Walter Crane, Edmund Dulac, Louis Wain, Arthur Rackham, Cecil Aldin and Randolph Caldecott, most are now barely remembered (if, indeed, they are remembered at all). They were all commissioned to provide illustrations for children's fiction, for the thousands of historical, adventure, school, mystery, war, Wild West and other novels that were published from the 1869s onwards. Many also illustrated other types of children's books - picture books for the nursery, fairy stories, bible stories, and school readers and textbooks. Some were remarkably prolific, while others illustrated only a handful of books. Many also contributed to children's story papers, magazines and comics, from the "penny dreadfuls" of the late 19th century and the comics and story papers published by Alfred Harmsworth and the Amalgamated Press to the more "respectable" periodicals such as "The Boy's Own Paper", "Chums" and "The Captain". Many also illustrated adult fiction and non-fiction, and many contributed, often prolifically, to the leading news, general interest and fiction periodicals of the day. Furthermore, many were well-known, well-respected and successful painters, and while they are still well-known today - for example Terence Cuneo, Rowland Hilder and George Soper - their work as children's illustrators is now wholly overlooked. By providing life stories and comprehensive bibliographies of each illustrator's work, this book aims to give recognition where it is long overdue, to correct many of the mistakes made in previous reference sources, and to remember a body of artists many of whom have been unjustly neglected.Robert J. Kirkpatrick is the author of "The Encyclopaedia of Boys' School Stories" (2000); "Bullies, Beaks and Flannelled Fools: An Annotated Bibliography of Boys' School Fiction 1742-2000" (2001); "From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha'penny Dreadfuller: A Bibliographic History of the Boys' Periodical in Britain, 1762-1950" (2013); "Pennies, Profits and Poverty: A Biographical Directory of Wealth and Want in Bohemian Fleet Street" (2016); and "Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby and the Yorkshire Schools: Fact v Fiction" (2017).