Kate Greenaway

Children's Book Illustrator

• Born: March 17, 1846
• Birthplace: Hoxton, London, England
• Died: November 6, 1901
• Place of death: Frognal, London, United Kingdom

Biography

Catherine Greenaway, better known as Kate, was born on March 17, 1846, in Hoxton, London, England. Her mother ran a ladies’ outfitters in Islington and the family lived above the shop. Her father, an engraver for the Illustrated London News, encouraged her drawing from an early age. She was formerly trained at Slade School, and then worked for the emerging greeting card industry and illustrated calendars and books. She also illustrated for the popular children’s magazine, Little Folks, and designed title pages and frontispieces for the Girl’s Own Annual.

Through the development of color printing, Greenaway, together with Randolph Caldecott and Walter Crane, is credited with creating a new style of nursery picture books during the late nineteenth century. Her style of simple line drawings and colored pictures of boys and girls in Victorian frocks, smocks, and bonnets, with boys in hats and short jackets, influenced generations of illustrators.

In the 1870’s, Greenaway illustrated children’s books written by other authors. She eventually began writing and illustrating her own books for children. Under the Window, with Coloured Pictures and Rhymes for Children, first published in 1878, was also issued in French and German editions, with 100,000 copies produced. Kate Greenaway’s Birthday Book for Children (1880) ran to 150,000 copies. In 1881, she designed an edition of the Mother Goose stories, Mother Goose: Or, The Old Nursery Rhymes, which was so popular it was featured in Punch magazine three times that year.

Encouraged by the success of her widely popular first books, Greenaway continued to both write and illustrate. The Language of Flowers, published in 1884, was followed by Kate Greenaway’s Alphabet (1885), Kate Greenaway’s Book of Games (1889), and A Apple Pie: An Old-Fashioned Alphabet Book (1886). Her commercial prosperity peaked during the 1880’s, with the old-world charm of her characters’ costumes capturing the imagination of her readers. In France, imitation of this costume was so frenzied it became known as “Greenawisme.” Her series of annual Almanacks, published continuously between 1883 and 1895, fed the public interest in her style and the chubby, innocent characters her illustrations portrayed.

Two of her most popular illustrated books remain The Queen of the Pirate Isle (1886), written by Bret Harte, and The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1888), with text by Robert Browning. Her vast commercial success allowed her to have a home specially built in Frognal, a suburb of London. She moved there in 1885, sharing the house with her brother, mother, and father. She devoted her life to illustrating children’s books and painting until her death from breast cancer on November 6, 1901. She was cremated and her ashes buried next to her mother and father in Hampstead Cemetery.

Greenaway’s innovative style of illustration, with clean page designs that left uncluttered space for neatly typeset verses, became a model for modern children’s picture books. Her enormous influence upon children’s literature is recognized by the establishment of the Kate Greenaway Medal, presented annually by the Library Association of Great Britain to a British artist for distinguished children’s book illustration.