Honey & Wax Booksellers Archives

Original illustration for “The Brownies’ Voyage”

Cox, Palmer

Original ink drawing 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. This image of the Brownies swimming to land after a shipwreck appears on page 113, illustrating the story "The Brownies' Voyage:" "But yet, on broken plank and rail, / On splintered spars and bits of sail / That strewed for miles the rugged strand, / The Brownies safely reached the land." A wonderful original drawing from the very first Brownies book. Pen and ink drawing on stiff paper, image measuring 8.5 x 7.5 inches, mounted to original stiff card measuring 10.25 x 9 inches. Signed in lower right image, notes to printer penciled in margin of mount, "The Century Co." art department stamp and pastedown label to verso. Light foxing to image, mount foxed, outer margins with old cellotape marks. Laid into contemporary protective paper folder.