Description
No Jacket. The Very Good- binding is red cloth over boards, 4 3/8″ x 3 3/4″ pictorial past-on, black lettering on the spine, wear to the head and foot of the spine, light shelf wear, darkening of the cloth at the spine, corners bumped. Illustrated endpapers, front free endpaper has ink writing, the next page has ink writings dated 15 January 1935. The binding is tight and pages are clean. Three full page color illustrations, twelve full page black-and-white illustrations plus smaller black-and-white illustrations throughout the book by Elizabeth MacKinstry.
About the illustrator:
Elizabeth MacKinstry, American poet, illustrator, and sculptor, was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on March 31, 1878, the only child of Caroline Conkling McKinstry and Abraham B. McKinstry (1826-1882), a farmer and postmaster. After her father’s death, MacKinstry lived in France and Belgium, specifically in Paris from 1892 to 1901 where she studied with the sculptor Auguste Rodin. From 1909 until 1920 she lived with her mother in Buffalo, New York, working there as an artist and teaching art classes; after 1910 the spelling of their last name changed from McKinstry to MacKinstry. She lived and worked in New York City from the mid-twenties to 1938, turning out illustrations for several New York publishing houses, as well as costume designs, decorations, and illustrations for local theater groups. In her later years MacKinstry lived in and around Lenox, Massachusetts, near Emily Howland Leeming Lyman (1871-1951), a friend from Buffalo, and donated her collection of more than 300 illustrated books to the Lenox Library in 1949. Elizabeth MacKinstry died on May 14, 1956, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and was buried in Lenox.
MacKinstry’s work was exhibited in one-woman shows at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo (1922), and in memorial exhibitions at the Lenox Library (1956), in the Central Children’s Room of the New York Public Library (1957), and at the Boston Public Library (1958). The April 1957 issue of The Horn Book Magazine was largely devoted to essays on MacKinstry by her colleagues and admirers.
