Greenaway, Kate

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Greenaway, Kate

Personal

Given name originally Catherine; known to friends and relatives as K. G.; born March 17, 1846, in Hoxton, London, England; died of breast cancer, November 6, 1901, in Frognal, Hampstead, London; buried in Hampstead Cemetery; daughter of John (an engraver) and Elizabeth (Jones) Greenaway. Education: Privately educated; studied at the Slade School of Art, London. Hobbies and other interests: Gardening, walking her dog, reading.

Career

Author and illustrator of children's books; designed Christmas cards, birthday cards, and valentines; also designed and sewed the dresses she used as models for her paintings. Exhibitions: Dudley Gallery, Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, England, 1868; Gallery of Fine Art Society, London, England, 1891, 1893, and 1898.

Member

Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours.

Awards, Honors

In 1955, the Library Association of Great Britain established the "Kate Greenaway Medal," which is awarded annually to the artist living and publishing in Britain who has produced the most distinguished work in the illustration of children's books that year.

Writings

SELF-ILLUSTRATED

Under the Window: Pictures and Rhymes for Children (also see below), Routledge (London, England), 1878.

Kate Greenaway's Birthday Book for Children (includes verses by Sale Barker), Routledge (London, England), 1880, published as Kate Greenaway's Birthday Book, Derrydale (New York, NY), 1980.

Art Hours: After Kate Greenaway, McLoughlin (New York, NY), 1882.

Steps to Art: After Kate Greenaway, McLoughlin (New York, NY), 1882.

Kate Greenaway's Almanack for 1883-95, 1897, 14 volumes, Routledge (London, England), 1882-96.

Language of Flowers, Routledge (London, England), 1884, revised edition published as Kate Greenaway's "Language of Flowers," Gramercy (New York, NY), 1978, revised and expanded edition published as The Illuminated "Language of Flowers": Over Seven-Hundred Flowers and Plants Listed Alphabetically with Their Meanings (includes a text by Jean Marsh), Holt, 1978, reprinted under original title, Dover Publications (Mineola, NY), 1993.

Kate Greenaway's Alphabet, Routledge (London, England), 1885, reprinted, Cape, 1973.

Marigold Garden: Pictures and Rhymes (also see below), Routledge (London, England), 1885, Putnam (New York, NY), 2001.

A Apple Pie: An Old-Fashioned Alphabet Book (also see below), Routledge (London, England), 1886, Derrydale (New York, NY), 1993.

Kate Greenaway's Book of Games (also see below), Routledge (New York, NY), 1889, reprinted, Merrimack (New York, NY), 1990.

ILLUSTRATOR

Diamonds and Toads, Warne (New York, NY), 1871.

Marie Aulnoy, Madame d'Aulnoy's Fairy Tales, 9 volumes, Gall & Inglis, 1871.

Aunt Cae, The Children of the Parsonage, Griffith & Farran (London, England), 1874.

Kathleen Knox, Fairy Gifts; or, A Wallet of Wonders, Griffith & Farran (London, England), 1874.

Kathleen Knox, Seven Birthdays; or, The Children of Fortune, [London], 1875.

(With Walter Crane) Quiver of Love: A Collection of Valentines, M. Ward, 1876.

Fanny LaBlanche, Starlight Stories Told to Bright Eyes, Griffith & Farran (London, England), 1877.

Lady Colin Campbell, Topo, M. Ward, 1878.

Charlotte Mary Yonge, Heir of Redclyffe, Macmillan (London, England), 1879.

Charlotte Mary Yonge, Heartsease, Macmillan (London, England), 1879.

George Weatherly, The "Little Folks" Painting Book, Cassell (London, England), 1879.

Mother Goose; or, The Old Nursery Rhymes (also see below), Routledge (London, England), 1881, published as Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose; or, The Old Nursery Rhymes, Penguin Putnam (New York, NY), 1988.

Myles Birket Foster, Day in a Child's Life, Routledge (London, England), 1881, Merrimack (New York, NY), 1986.

Ann and Jane Taylor, Little Ann and Other Poems, Routledge (London, England), 1882.

Montgomerie Ranking and Thomas K. Tully, Flowers and Fancies: Valentines Ancient and Modern, M. Ward, 1882.

Helen Zimmern, Tales from the Edda, Sonnenschein (London, England), 1883.

(With others) Songs for the Nursery: A Collection of Children's Poems, Old and New, compiled by Robert Ellice, W. Mack, 1884.

William Mavor, English Spelling Book, Routledge (London, England), 1884.

Dame Wiggins of Lee and Her Seven Wonderful Cats, edited by John Ruskin, George Allen (London, England), 1885.

Bret Harte, The Queen of the Pirate Isle, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1886, reprinted, White Rose Press, 1987.

William Allingham, Rhymes for the Young Folk, Cassell (London, England), 1887.

Robert Browning, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Routledge (London, England), 1888, Warne Frederick & Company (New York, NY), 2001.

Beatrice F. Cresswell, Royal Progress of King Pepito, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (London, England), 1889.

Mary Annette Arnim, April Baby's Book of Tunes, Macmillan (London, England), 1900.

Mabel H. Speilmann, Littledom Castle and Other Tales, Dutton (Boston, MA), 1903.

Charlotte Knopfli-Widmer, Mein Herz ist mein Zuhaus, Ambros, 1978.

Hans Christian Andersen, Kate Greenaway's Original Drawings for the Snow Queen, translation by Charles Boner, afterword by Michael Patrick Hearn, Schocken, 1981.

Contributor to various periodicals, including Little Folks, St. Nicholas, Graphic, and Illustrated London News.

POSTHUMOUSLY PUBLISHED COLLECTIONS

Kate Greenaway's Pictures from Originals Presented by Her to John Ruskin and Other Personal Friends, F. Warne (New York, NY), 1921.

The Kate Greenaway Treasury: An Anthology of the Illustrations and Writings of Kate Greenaway, edited by Edward Ernest and Patricia Tracy Lowe, introduction by Ruth Hill Viguers, World Publishing, 1967.

The Kate Greenaway Book, edited by Bryan Holme, Viking (New York, NY), 1976.

Kate Greenaway (collection of illustrations), Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1977.

(Illustrator, with Eugene Grasset) The Illuminated Book of Days, edited by Kay and Marshall Lee, Putnam (New York, NY), 1979.

Kate Greenaway's Family Treasury (contains selections from A Apple Pie, Book of Games, Marigold Garden, Mother Goose, and Under the Window), Derrydale (New York, NY), 1979.

Kate Greenaway (collection of illustrations contained in the Frances Hooper Collection at the Hunt Institute; includes essays by Hooper, Rodney Engen, and John Brindle), edited by Robert Kiger, compiled by Bernadette Callery and others, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation (Pittsburgh, PA), 1980.

Sidelights

Illustrator and author Kate Greenaway is one of the few names truly synonymous with children's literature. Along with Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott, Greenaway was part of England's triumvirate of children's illustrators during the late nineteenth century. Greenaway's particular distinction was for creating rhyming verse alongside warm, cheerful pictures of idealized children. For many, her works represent the essence of childhood and Victorian England. In addition to books, Greenaway also designed children's clothing; her style—dubbed "Greenawisme" by one French commentator—became extremely popular in Europe and America in her day. After Greenaway died in 1901, her work continued to influence many twentieth-century children and artists from around the world. In recognition of her impact on children's literature, in 1955 the Library Association of Great Britain began granting the Kate Greenaway Medal, an annual award considered the highest honor an English illustrator can receive.

Born in 1846 in London, England, Greenaway enjoyed a pleasant childhood. Some of her earliest memories came from the period between 1847 and 1850 when she lived on a farm with her great aunt in Rolleston, England. There she acquired her love of the English countryside, which she often depicted in her works in later life. Her father, John, was a prominent wood engraver whose strong work ethic—he often worked through the night—influenced Kate and her adult work habits. When her father's publisher went broke in 1850, Greenaway moved with her family to Islington, England, where her mother opened a shop and sold dresses, lace, and other fineries. Many have traced Greenaway's talent for designing and making children's clothing to her years here. Whether in the country or her mother's shop, Greenaway found amusement in everyday living. "I had such a very happy time when I was a child, and, curiously, was so very much happier then than my brother and sister, with exactly the same surroundings," she is quoted as saying in Kate Greenaway, by Marion Harry Spielmann and George Somes Layard. "I suppose my imaginary life made me one long continuous joy—filled everything with a strange wonder and beauty. Living in that childish wonder is a most beautiful feeling—I can so well remember it." Critics have cited Greenaway's ability to recapture in her art her "childish wonder" as one of the main reasons her work has endured over the years.

Greenaway's earliest drawings date back to the Indian uprising against Britain in 1857, when Britain fought off a mutiny and established its power in India. Creating pictures of people escaping the turmoil of battle sparked her interest in art, and the following year she began art classes. After winning her first award while in school, Greenaway decided to make art her career. Ten years later, in 1868, she had her first public exhibition of her work. By 1869 Greenaway was designing greeting cards and illustrating children's books. A few years later she decided to work on a book of her own. "Greenaway's ambition," Anne H. Lundin wrote in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "was to publish a book of her own verses and drawings based on her memories of Rolleston, street rhymes, and favorite childhood stories. She dressed her characters in the oldfashioned clothing so common in Rolleston: high-waisted gowns, smocks, and mobcaps. She accompanied these drawings with her own verse, based on nursery-rhyme morals and make-believe."

In 1878 Greenaway's first self-illustrated book, Under the Window: Pictures and Rhymes for Children, was published. The volume contains a variety of drawings featuring cherubs at play. One scene, for example, shows boys and girls filing out of a country schoolhouse. The verse reads: "School is over, / Oh, what fun! / Lessons finished, / Play begun. / Who'll run fastest, / You or I? / Who'll laugh loudest? / Let us try." The book was an immediate success, selling out of its first twenty-thousand copies quickly. "The first edition of twenty thousand, which [Greenaway's publisher] Routledge had considered to be excessive, quickly sold out; the second edition and foreign editions totaled nearly seventy thousand copies," according to Anne H. Lundin in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. By the early 1880s Greenaway's popularity spread beyond Great Britain to other countries, including the United States. Copies of her illustrations began appearing on plates, clothing, and vases—often without her permission. So fashionable was her work that one shoe salesman even wanted Greenaway to sponsor a Kate Greenaway shoe!

Encouraged by her success, Greenaway went on to produce other self-illustrated works for children, including Language of Flowers, Kate Greenaway's Alphabet, Kate Greenaway's Book of Games, and A Apple Pie: An Old-Fashioned Alphabet Book. Greenaway's commercial prosperity peaked during the 1880s, and in 1885 she moved into a home specially built for her in Frognal, a suburb of London. Sharing the house with her mother, father, and brother, Greenaway worked there on her children's books, children's clothing, and paintings until her death in 1901.

Critical reaction to Greenaway's work has been generally positive. In fact, Richard Cavendish, writing for History Today commented that "Kate Greenaway's illustrations had extraordinary charm. They showed saucy or demure curly-haired children in old-fashioned clothes—pretty girls in frocks, smocks and bonnets, boys in hats and short jackets—living in an innocent world where no serious harm would ever come to them." The most famous critic of her time was noted Victorian essayist John Ruskin, who frequently urged her to abandon children's books and concentrate on art. As Ruskin stated in The Art of England, he most enjoyed the realistic quality of her scenes: "[T]he beauty of them is in being like. They are blissful, just in the degree that they are natural; and the fairy land she creates for you is not beyond the sky nor beneath the sea, but nigh you, even at your doors. She does but show you how to see it, and how to cherish it." Ruskin and Greenaway shared an affection of sorts, one developed through the many letters they exchanged during the late nineteenth century. "From the first amazing letter Ruskin sent . . . she was apparently lost to his devouring influence, and in unabating need of the love whose promise he repeatedly extended and snatched back for the twenty years these two were to 'know' each other," Vivian Gornick reported in the Village Voice. Despite Ruskin's considerable influence, Greenaway continued producing children's books because they provided a reliable source of income. Still, she did try to please Ruskin by working in oils and having her works exhibited, most notably in a well-received London exhibition in 1891. But Greenaway never established herself as the technically proficient artist Ruskin envisioned, and since her death she is usually remembered for her children's books rather than her paintings.

Some critics, while admiring Greenaway for capturing the spirit of childhood in her books, observed that her illustrations reflect only the bright, cheerful side of life. "In Kate Greenaway's garden the sun is always shining," Ruth Hill Viguers wrote in her introduction to The Kate Greenaway Treasury. "We look at her pictures much as we look at a blossoming garden, seeing only the light on the flowers, forgetting the rain or the toil that went into the creation of that beauty." Greenaway was aware of her artistic focus on the good and defended it. "Goodness is so beautiful and so much the best," Greenaway said, as quoted in Spielmann and Layard's Kate Greenaway. "I hate narrow people who would take all the beauty and gaiety from the world. . . . People laugh at me, I am so delighted and pleased with things, and say I see with rose-coloured spectacles. What do you think—is it not a beautiful world? Sometimes have I got a defective art faculty that few things are ugly to me?"

If you enjoy the works of Kate Greenaway

If you enjoy the works of Kate Greenaway, you might want to check out the following books:

Hans Christian Andersen, The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, 1981.

John Ruskin, The Art of England, 1884.

A.N. Wilson, The Victorians, 2003.

Greenaway's sunny disposition darkened somewhat during the last decade of her life when she faced a series of difficulties: the deaths of her parents and of Ruskin; and the decline of her popularity as a children's author. "The longer I live the less I understand the scheme of life that comprises so much sadness in it," reflected Greenaway in 1894, as quoted in Kate Greenaway. Though she wasn't confident toward the end of her life that her art would stand the test of time, it has. Greenaway's books, which have remained in print during the twentieth century, stand as a lasting testimony to her ability to capture her "childish wonder" for future generations. "Greenaway's books," wrote Anne H. Lundin in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "represent the apotheosis of artistic picture books, with attention to the artistry of the book from cover to cover, especially in the key element of color. Her stature was recognized at the time and continues to be acknowledged in the modern age—virtually every historical survey of children's literature mentions her work in the development of the picture book. Greenaway titles continue to be published ..., and her stylized images are commercially produced on posters, stationery, coloring books, paper dolls, and needlework patterns. In some ways the Greenaway style is still as much an article of folk culture as it was in her time." As Viguers put it: "She is unique in that the most beautiful impressions of her childhood not only became part of the woman but remained in her memory so clearly as to be essential in the expression of the artist. This expression, endowing childhood and the actions, moods, and games of childhood with the beauty she felt, is a rightful inheritance of each new generation."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Almanac of Famous People, 6th edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Caplan, H. H., Classified Directory of Artists' Signatures, Symbols, & Monograms, 2nd edition, George Prior Publishers (London, England), 1982.

Carpenter, Humphrey, and Mari Prichard, Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1984.

Childhood in Poetry, 3rd Supplement, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1980.

Children's Literature Review, Volume 6, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

Chilvers, Ian, and Harold Osborne, editors, Oxford Dictionary of Art, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1988.

Crystal, David, editor, Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1998.

Davis, Dorothy R., editor and compiler, Carolyn Sherwin Bailey Historical Collection of Children's Books, Southern Connecticut State College (New Haven, CT), 1966.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 141: British Children's Writers, 1880-1914, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994.

Drabble, Margaret, editor, Oxford Companion to English Literature, revised 5th edition, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1995.

Dunford, Penny, A Biographical Dictionary of Women Artists in Europe and America since 1850, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1989.

Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, Volume 18, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Engen, Rodney, Kate Greenaway: a Biography, Jane's Information Group, 1981.

Ernest, Edward, and Patricia Tracy Lowe, editors, The Kate Greenaway Treasury: An Anthology of the Illustrations and Writings of Kate Greenaway, World Publishing, 1967.

Greenaway, Kate, Under the Window: Pictures and Rhymes for Children, Routledge (London, England), 1878.

Lee, Sir Sidney, editor, Dictionary of National Biography, 2nd Supplement, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1912.

Mallalieu, H.L., Dictionary of British Watercolour Artists up to 1920, Antique Collectors' Club (Woodbridge, England), 1976.

Meigs, Cornelia Lynde, and others, editors, A Critical History of Children's Literature, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1953.

Osborne, Harold, editor, Oxford Companion to Art, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1970.

Ousby, Ian, editor, Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1988.

Ruskin, John, The Art of England, George Allen (London, England), 1883.

Spielmann, Marion Harry, and George Somes Layard, Kate Greenaway, A. & C. Black, 1905.

Sutherland, John, Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1989.

Thomson, Susan Ruth, Kate Greenaway: A Catalogue of the Kate Greenaway Collection, Rare Book Room, Detroit Public Library, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 1977.

Wood, Christopher, Dictionary of Victorian Painters, 2nd edition, Antique Collectors' Club (Woodbridge, England), 1978.

Yesterday's Authors of Books for Children, Volume 2, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1978.