Three original illustrations for “The Brownies’ Friendly Turn”
1887. Three pen and ink drawings on stiff paper, two images measuring 8.25 x 7.5 inches and one measuring 9.5 x 7.5 inches, all mounted to original stiff card mounts. Signed in lower image, abbreviated captions and notes to printer penciled in lower margin of mounts, with typed label to lower mount of “Completing the Task.” “The Century Co.” publisher’s stamp to versos of two images. Outer margins with old cellotape marks and occasional marginal chips. Laid into contemporary protective paper folders, lightly chipped.
Trio of original ink drawings for The Brownies: Their Book, published by The Century Company in 1887, the first book appearance of Canadian author and illustrator Palmer Cox’s beloved Brownies. The adventures of the Brownies were serialized in St. Nicholas and Ladies’ Home Journal, and adapted for a Sunday comic strip, ultimately inspiring a long series of bestselling children’s books. Cox licensed the Brownies to promote all kinds of merchandise, including Kodak’s wildly popular Brownie camera, the first mass-produced portable camera, which popularized home photography. The early illustrations in The Brownies: Their Book are considered among Cox’s best, containing fewer of the stereotypical ethnic Brownies which would appear in his later titles. These three drawings were published as illustrations to the story “The Brownies’ Friendly Turn,” in which the Brownies gather firewood for the village parson whose congregation has forgotten him: “Around the house some staid to pile / The gathered wood in proper style; / Which ever harder work they found / As high and higher rose the mound.” The three drawings are “Explaining the Situation,” published on page 126; “Supplies Under Way,” on page 128; and “Completing the Task,” on page 131. A highly amusing and desirable group of original drawings from the very first Brownies book.
Price: $6,000.00