blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

Twentieth-century woman, Tasha Tudor, lived her life as though she occupied a nineteenth-century world. Indeed, this Caldecott winner believed herself the reincarnation of a sailor’s wife from the 1800s. Her passion for the Victorian Era was a natural outpouring of this earlier existence--real or imaginary. Her appreciation for Victorian classics resonates in her illustrations and fosters a similar enthusiasm in all who enjoy her work.

This week we celebrate Edward St. John Gorey, born February 22, 1925. “He was a cartoonist in the widest definition and a major illustrator in the smallest,” said friend Alexander Theroux. “Edward was one of the few people I ever knew who did exactly what he wanted.” Gorey published over 100 books and illustrated dozens for other writers, including Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Edward Lear, Muriel Spark, John Updike, and H. G. Wells. He was a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, and illustrated every anniversary cover between 1978 and 1998. Editor Barbara Epstein described his drawings as “beautiful, ravishing.”

If, in the words of James Barron Hope, “Tis after death that we measure men,” William Blake is fortunate indeed. Now a paragon of the Romantic Age whose poems and engravings are among the most famous of his time, Blake’s contemporaries dismissed his work and largely considered him insane. William Wordsworth wrote, “There was no doubt that this poor man was mad” and John Ruskin called him “diseased and wild.” Although his work was not understood during his lifetime, Blake has become one of the most important poets, engravers, and artists of the Romantic Age.

On November 26, 1922, Charles Schulz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was raised in a humble family and read the comic pages every Sunday with his father, growing fond of the Mickey Mouse and Popeye strips. He knew from a young age that drawing cartoons is what he wanted to spend his life doing, and in 1937, his drawing of his family dog, Spike was published in the Ripley’s Believe it or Not newspaper.

Today we celebrate the inimitable Kay Thompson, born November 9, 1909 with the unpromising name Catherine Fink. A brilliant composer, dancer, singer, and author, Thompson was above all a tremendous personality.  In the words of film critic, Rex Reed, “If you don’t know who Kay Thompson is, please turn the page. You just flunked pizazz. Legend has it that she even invented the word.”

Legendary illustrator Hilary Knight famously brought to life the impish Eloise.  The son of two artists, Knight was born in Hempstead, Long Island. He lived next door to the public library for the first six years of his life and spent many hours among the books that later shaped his artistic style. Knight was particularly influenced by illustrators Edmund Dulac and E. H. Shepard. “These are probably my most favorite books of all,” he said. “They are so funny. Shepard’s pen-and-ink drawings [in Winnie the Pooh] are so simple and direct; he was a truly remarkable artist.  Dulac, on the other hand, was sheer fantasy. He was glamorous and exotic.”

On November 1, 1926, author and illustrator Hilary Knight was born. Best known for illustrating the beloved protagonist of Kay Thompson's Eloise (1955), Knight has worked in a wide variety of genres over the course of his career. He has illustrated over 50 books and authored nine.