HAYWOOD; Helen – 146 original pencil drawings for the children’s book Brer Rabbit stories. March-August 1958. Various sizes. Various signed.

These charming drawings represent the complete preparatory pencil sketches for the children’s book Brer Rabbit Stories published in 1959 in Edinburgh by Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd. The collection contains the complete final pencil drawings consisting of 12 double page drawings (approx. 40 x 50cm), 38 one page drawings (approx. 40 x 25cm), and further 96 small preparatory sketches on 69 paper clippings in various sizes and some small preparatory text sheets.

Helen Haywood (1908-1995) was an English writer and illustrator of children’s books. She created primarily books with animal illustrations including a series of books based around the pig character Peter Tiggywig, Hedgehog’s Holiday (1938), Figgles Frog Sees Life (1940’s), Sandy’s Seven Tails (1947), The Happy Tree (1951), The Helen Haywood Christmas Book (1952), Master Mouse the Madcap (1958), Aesop’s Fables (1950’s) and many more. Haywood was also a practitioner of the art of fore-edge painting. She did several fore-edge paintings on commission every year from the 1930s to the 1970s for Inman’s Books, an antiquarian book dealer in New York City. – Old folds, the one page drawings were cut from the original double page sheets, one double-page drawing with old tape repair.

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