Kate Greenaway was born on March 17, 1846, at Cavendish Street in London. Her father being a well-known engraver and an architect, Kate began to respond to her artistic talent in her early teens. She was raised in a loving family environment and her unique illustrations were born of her memories of a happy childhood.

Growing up, Kate Greenaway spent her summers in Ralston, Nottinghamshire, an English countryside, where her mother moved for the change of air for health. Every day Kate played in the lush green and sunny world. Such a happy and carefree childhood would later greatly influence her artwork. The children she depicted in her illustrations appeared to be reflections of herself as a child. Later in her life, she wrote about her childhood in Ralston, "Fryer Garden was the most wonderful place amongst all the gardens I knew. My life there was like a paradise." For the wide-eyed, sensitive child the idyllic English countryside was the most beautiful place on earth. From such vivid childhood memories, Greenaway depicted children and ladies with flowers and birds amidst verdant landscapes and tidy well-maintained cottages.

Greenaway's father was a friend of Edmund Evans, the renowned color printer. When she showed her portfolio of drawings and poems to Evans, he immediately decided to publish them as a collection. In 1878, Kate published her first book, a picture book with verses titled Under the Window. This book was an immediate critical and financial success and made an epoch in children's books in the last third of the 19th Century. Her name became well known not only in England but in the rest of the Europe and the United States as well.

Kate Greenaway was also greatly influential in the world of fashion. She dressed the children and adult models which she drew in quaint fashions reminiscent of the Empire style of the early 19th Century - clothing far more suited to the period of her own childhood than to the late 1800s. This idealized and nostalgic view of the world struck a deep chord in a Victorian population already apprehensive of the cataclysmic changes the industrial revolution was bringing to their lives. Over a century later, Greenaway's illustrations and poems continue to speak to a universal yearning for innnocence and beauty.

Kate Greenaway passed away on November 6, 1901 of breast cancer, surrounded by several of her friends at her bedside. She was just 55 years old.

CURRENT EDITIONS:

Molly & Jack - Kate Greenaway Twins

RETIRED EDITIONS:

Kate Greenaway Maypole

Rebecca