Mary Ellen Edwards

Mary Ellen Edwards ( 9 November 1838 – 22 December 1934), also known as MEE, was an English artist who contributed to many Victorian newspapers and journals, as well being a prolific illustrator of children's books.

Biography

Waifs from the Great City

The daughter of Mary Johnson and Downes Edwards, a farmer and engineer who had a number of successful inventions, she was born on her father’s farm in Surbiton.

She spent her early years with her family in Surbiton, the Isle of Man, South Kensington, and Chelsea, London. She established a substantial reputation for her illustrations of Trollope's The Claverings, which was serialized in The Cornhill Magazine from 1866 to 1867.[1][2] She married, on 13 June 1866, John Freer. They had one son, born in 1867, but John Freer died in 1869. At this time and over the following decade Mary Ellen was submitting her work to the annual Royal Academy shows. From 1869 to 1880 she was on the staff of The Graphic.[1] In 1872 she married the artist John Charles Staples, with whom she worked on many projects until his death at the end of the century.[3]

Her illustration Waifs from the Great City was included in the 1905 book Women Painters of the World.[4]

References

  1. 1 2 Brake, Laurel; Demoor, Marysa, eds. (2009). "Edwards, Mary Ellen". Dictionary of Nineteenth-century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. Academia Press. pp. 194–195.
  2. ↑ "A Friendly Tale" by MEE in The Cornhill Magazine, 1866
  3. ↑ Benezit Dictionary of British Graphic Artists and Illustrators, Volume 1. Oxford University Press. 2012. p. 364. ISBN 9780199923052.
  4. ↑ Women painters of the world, from the time of Caterina Vigri, 1413-1463, to Rosa Bonheur and the present day, by Walter Shaw Sparrow, The Art and Life Library, Hodder & Stoughton, 27 Paternoster Row, London, 1905
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