Kate Greenaway

Kate Greenaway 1846-1901, English illustrator and watercolorist. She is famous for her fanciful, humorous, delicately colored drawings of child life. She influenced children's clothing and the illustrating of children's books and was often imitated, though never successfully. Among the books for which she provided text as well as illustrations are Under the Window (1879), A Day in a Child's Life (1881), Kate Greenaway's Birthday Album, and The Language of Flowers (1885).

Bibliography: See The Kate Greenaway Treasury ed. by E. Ernest (1967).

Greenaway, Kate (b London, 17 Mar. 1846; d London, 6 Nov. 1901). English painter, illustrator, and writer, famous for her children's books. Her delicate skill and fragile sentimentality won her many distinguished admirers, including Ruskin and (perhaps for her feeling for flat pattern) Gauguin. She often illustrated her own texts, for example in Kate Greenaway's Almanack, of which she issued a series (1888–97), and her work became so popular that the quaint clothes that are such a feature of her illustrations influenced children's costume. In 1955 the Library Association of Great Britain established the Kate Greenaway Medal to be awarded annually for the most distinguished work in the illustration of a children's book during the previous year.