Genevieve Foster
Genevieve Foster was an American author and illustrator known for her engaging history books aimed at children. Born in 1893, she faced early challenges, including the death of her father when she was just a year old. Foster grew up in a creative environment, developing her artistic skills and eventually pursuing formal education in art. After earning her bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin and studying at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, she worked as a freelance commercial artist.
In 1922, she married and took a break from her artistic career but later resumed it, focusing on children's literature. Discontent with traditional history education, she aimed to provide context to historical events in her books, which included notable figures like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Foster's works, which combined her writing with illustrations, received critical acclaim, earning several Newbery Honor Book distinctions. Over her prolific career, she authored nearly twenty volumes, with translations in multiple languages, making her contributions recognized worldwide. Foster passed away in 1979, leaving behind a legacy that continues to resonate in children's literature.
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Subject Terms
Genevieve Foster
Writer
- Born: April 13, 1893
- Birthplace: Oswego, New York
- Died: August 30, 1979
- Place of death: Westport, Connecticut
Biography
Genevieve Stump Foster was the only child of Jessie Starrin Stump and John William Stump, who died when Genevieve was only a year old. After her father’s death, she and her mother left Oswego, New York, and moved into her maternal grandparents’ home in Whitewater, Wisconsin. When her grandfather died three years later, she, her mother, and her grandmother, whom she worshipped, were left in a twenty-room house.
As a child, Genevieve learned to draw, and with two like-minded classmates the six-year-old created an art studio on the top floor of her grandmother’s house. After graduating from high school, she attended the University of Wisconsin, where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1915. Because she was still an ardent painter, she then enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts for the 1916-1917 academic year. She then began a career as a freelance commercial artist, doing copywriting, drawing, and layouts for various magazines and newspapers. Although she was interested in the work, she gave it up when she married Orrington Foster in 1922.
After the birth of her two children, Orrington and Joanna, Foster resumed her art career, drawing first for Child Life magazine and then for several children’s books. Inspired, she decided to try her own hand at writing history books for children. Because Foster had disliked studying history in school, she set out to write children’s books that would put historical events within their national and international context so that they could be more readily understood. The volumes in her World series thus present events in the lives of their subjects (George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Augustus Caesar), as well as the context within which they lived. She also supplemented the texts with her own illustrations, maps, and charts.
Foster’s Washington and Lincoln books were named Newbery Honor Books, as was the first volume of her Birthdays of Freedom series. Her last book, one about the Wright brothers, was published in 1977, just two years before she died in Westport, Connecticut. She wrote and illustrated nearly twenty volumes. Her books have gained international fame and have been translated into at least fifteen languages, including Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Urdu, and Vietnamese.