“I’m so used to people not knowing about anything but Eloise. That sort of disappoints me.” – Hilary Knight, illustrator of Eloise
Here’s my collection of seldom-seen illustrations by Hilary Knight, who drew the pictures for the Eloise books and turns out to have had a long career as illustrator for magazines, books and posters, along with pictures from the fascinating history and background of Eloise, also seldom seen. It all shares the droll, quirky wit of the Eloise books, making Knight one of our most inspired illustrators.
Some of what’s here I saw at an exhibition at the Normal Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts and and had only been published once, ephemerally, such as in magazine articles, before completely disappearing from view; others are never-published drafts and other rarities from the exhibition. Still others I dug up myself in online libraries and auction catalogues. Altogether, very little of it has ever been gathered all in one place.
Also I’ve pulled together the first-ever collection of all the material from the first Eloise book which was published in 1955 but underwent revisions in the 1980s, when it seems to have been decided that certain parts that were acceptable for children when first published in the 1950s were now too racy, such as toilets, cannabis and poking fun at Peter Rabbit. As fas as I know the changes have only been mentioned once or twice in print and never all together in one place .
