John R. Neill

John Rea Neill (November 12, 1877 – September 19, 1943) was a magazine and children's book illustrator primarily known for illustrating more than forty books set in the Land of Oz. Those books include all but one of those written by L. Frank Baum, as well as those written by Ruth Plumly Thompson, and three that Neill himself wrote.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He also illustrated other books, and magazine and newspaper stories.

It has been said that "Neill possessed a sweeping flair and whimsicality that brought Oz even more vividly to life,"<ref>Fricke, John. The Wonderful World of Oz; An Illustrated History of the American Classic. Down East Books. 2013. Template:ISBN p. 22</ref> and that although Neill "is particularly remembered for his imaginative concepts; his technique, composition, and draftsmanship were equally outstanding."<ref>Guptill, Arthur. Rendering in Pen and Ink. Watson Guptill Random House. 1997. Template:ISBN</ref>

Early life

John R. Neill's artwork for the cover of The Royal Book of Oz (1921)

Neill was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Neill’s father, Robert Rea Neill, was born in Ireland in 1845, and came to the United States when he was 17. Neill’s mother, Mary, was born in Nyack, New York in 1847. Robert and Mary wed in 1870; they had eight children. They settled in the Bella Vista area of Philadelphia. Robert ran a neighborhood laundry. Neill’s father died when Neill was 10.<ref>Saunders, David. "Pulp Artists" webpage. 2011</ref><ref>"Illustrator’s Lounge" webpage</ref><ref>Snow, Jack. Who's Who in Oz. Illustrated by John R. Neill, Frank Kramer, and “Dirk”. The Reilly & Lee Company. Chicago. 1954. Pp 274-5. [1]</ref>

John R. Neill did his first illustration work for the Philadelphia's Central High School newspaper and yearbook in 1894–95. Neill then enrolled in Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but left after one semester, purportedly saying, "They have nothing to teach me". He was 18.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Snow, Jack. Who's Who in Oz. Illustrated by John R. Neill, Frank Kramer, and “Dirk”. The Reilly & Lee Company. Chicago. 1954. Pp 274-5. [2]</ref>

In 1900 he settled in Brooklyn, New York. He was hired by The New York Evening Journal, where he met the artist Joseph Clement Coll.<ref>Saunders, David. "Pulp Artists" webpage. 2011</ref><ref>Snow, Jack. Who's Who in Oz. Illustrated by John R. Neill, Frank Kramer, and “Dirk”. The Reilly & Lee Company. Chicago. 1954. Pp 274-5. [3]</ref>

He moved back to Philadelphia in 1901, and was hired by The Philadelphia Public Ledger. He married Elsie Barrows in Philadelphia on October 7, 1902.<ref>1900-1910: The Baum Oz Years International Wizard of Oz Club webpage. Accessed 2025-10-5</ref> He then turned to advertising art for the Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia. In 1904, he became a staff artist of the Philadelphia North American newspaper, where he met L. Frank Baum, and he produced features including the comics strip Toyland, illustrations for the serialization of The Fate of a Crown (a book by L. Frank Baum), Children's Stories That Never Grow Old, and the Sunday comics page "The Little Journeys of Nip and Tuck" with verses by W.R. Bradford (1909–1910).<ref>Snow, Jack. Who's Who in Oz. Illustrated by John R. Neill, Frank Kramer, and "Dirk". The Reilly & Lee Company. Chicago. 1954. Pp 274-5. [4]</ref><ref>Saunders, David. "Pulp Artists" webpage. 2011</ref><ref>"Illustrator’s Lounge" webpage</ref>

He was first commissioned to illustrate The Marvelous Land of Oz, the second Oz book L. Frank Baum wrote, published in 1904. For each Oz book, Baum's publishers would send Neill the manuscript, and Neill would work on the illustrations in a studio in Lumberville, Pennsylvania.<ref>Snow, Jack. Who's Who in Oz. Illustrated by John R. Neill, Frank Kramer, and "Dirk". The Reilly & Lee Company. Chicago. 1954. Pp 274-5. [5]</ref><ref>Saunders, David. "Pulp Artists" webpage. 2011</ref><ref>Baum, L. Frank. The Annotated Wizard of Oz: The wonderful Wizard of Oz. Clarkson N. Potter, inc./Publisher New York. 1973. p. 50.</ref>

He and Margaret Carroll, an actress, were wed in 1919. She gave birth to three children, and they moved to Kensington Gardens, on Long Island, New York, where he had a studio and a small theater, where his daughters staged plays, and Neill painted sets. His daughters sometimes served as models for Neill as he drew the characters in the Oz books. They bought a farm in Flanders, New Jersey, where they lived for almost a decade, before Neill died of a heart ailment.<ref>Snow, Jack. Who's Who in Oz. Illustrated by John R. Neill, Frank Kramer, and “Dirk”. The Reilly & Lee Company. Chicago. 1954. Pp 274-5. [6]</ref><ref>Saunders, David. "Pulp Artists" webpage. 2011</ref>

The first Oz book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, had been illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Baum and Denslow shared the copyright for books they worked on. A disagreement arose when Denslow published images from his works with Baum, but gave Baum a diminished credit line, and again in 1900 minimized Blaum’s contribution. In a letter to his publishers in 1915 Baum said, "Denslow was allowed to copyright his pictures jointly with my claim to authorship," and "having learned my lesson from my unfortunate experiences with Denslow, I will never permit another artist to have an interest in the drawings he makes of my described characters, if I ever can help it." Then in 1901 Denslow insisted on a share of the royalties for the dramatization of the musical version of The Wizard of Oz and threatened to sue. To avoid that Baum agreed to his terms, but they parted ways.<ref>Baum, L. Frank. The Annotated Wizard of Oz: The wonderful Wizard of Oz Clarkson N. Potter, inc./Publisher New York. 1973. P 43.</ref><ref>"W. W. Denslow’s Illustrations for the Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)". The Public Domain Review. January 8, 2020. [7]</ref><ref>"Oz Artist Denslow: The Who Would Be King". Bunews. March 9, 2013</ref>

Career

Neill's illustrations were published in the leading magazines of the first few decades of the twentieth century, including Collier's, Vanity Fair, The Saturday Evening Post, The Ladies Home Journal, Century, Pictorial Review, The Delineator, Boys' Life, St. Nicholas, The People's Home Journal, Adventure <ref>Robinson, Frank M. & Davidson, Lawrence. Pulp Culture - The Art of Fiction Magazines. Collectors Press Inc 2007 (p.33-48).</ref> and many others. In 1930 and 1931, he contributed a great deal of artwork to Argosy.<ref>Snow, Jack. Who's Who in Oz. Illustrated by John R. Neill, Frank Kramer, and "Dirk". The Reilly & Lee Company. Chicago. 1954. Pp 274-5. [8]</ref>

Dorothy

John R. Neill's depiction of Dorothy in The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)

Dorothy drawn by Denslow appeared to be a chubby five- or six-year-old with long brown hair in two thick braids that remained untied at the ends. Neill chose to illustrate a new Dorothy in 1907 when the character was reintroduced in Ozma of Oz. He illustrated the young girl in a more fashionable appearance. She is shown to be about ten years old, dressed in contemporary American fashions, with blonde hair cut in a fashionable bob. A similar modernization was given to other female characters.

Neill and Denslow each had their own way or style of drawing the characters of Oz. In The Road to Oz, Neill toys with that difference: In the Tin Woodman’s garden, Dorothy and her dog, Toto come across statues of themselves–just as "they first appeared in the Land of Oz." Neill portrays Dorothy and Toto in his graceful pen-and-ink style, while the statues are portrayed in Denslow’s style. Toto seems especially amused by this encounter.<ref>Baum, L. Frank. The Annotated Wizard of Oz: The wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Clarkson N. Potter, inc./Publisher New York. 1973. P. 50</ref>

Dorothy and Toto encounter statues of themselves, illustration from The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum

Toto from The Road to Oz

Oz work

Neill illustrated 13 Oz books written by L. Frank Baum, 19 by Ruth P. Thompson, and 3 that he wrote himself.<ref>Saunders, David. Pulp Artists webpage. 2011</ref> Neill has been referred to as the "Imperial Illustrator of Oz".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Neill continued to illustrate the Oz books after Baum's death. His artwork was praised for helping to give Ruth Plumly Thompson's books "legitimacy" in the eyes of Baum's fans. Neill would eventually succeed Thompson as the designated "Oz historian" and write several books himself.

Author John Goldthwaight states that "Much of the credit for those images of Oz that settle lastingly in the mind must go to his illustrators, W. W. Denslow in the inaugural volume and John R. Neil thereafter."<ref>Goldthwaite, John. "The Natural History of Make Believe". Oxford University Press. Template:ISBN 1996. pp 204-206</ref>

The Wonder City of Oz, The Scalawagons of Oz, and Lucky Bucky in Oz, which debuted each year from 1940 to 1942, were written by Neill for the publisher Reilly & Lee and are considered part of the Famous Forty. His last work, The Runaway in Oz, was drafted before his death, but the full illustrations were never finished and Reilly & Lee decided not to publish the manuscript. However, Neill's widow kept the manuscript safe, and, in 1995, it was finally published by Books of Wonder and edited and illustrated by Eric Shanower. The book's design reproduces the design used throughout almost all of the Baum, Thompson, and Neill Oz books (without the color plates), and the story itself follows the adventures of the Patchwork Girl with some new characters invented by Neill.

Dorothy and Ozma by John. R. Neill (1908)

Non-Oz work

Illustration by John R. Neill for the story "An Actor's Love Story" written by R. Connell, published in Pictorial Review magazine

Here is a partial list of books, illustrated by Neill, that are not part of the Oz series.

• The Enchanted Castle; a Book of Fairy Tales, edited by Hartwell James, 1906<ref>James, Hartwell, editor. The Enchanted Castle; a Book of Fairy Tales. H. Altemus Company, 1906</ref>
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, 1908<ref>Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Reilly & Britton Co., 1908</ref>
• Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell, 1908.<ref>Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty. Reilly & Lee, Co. 1908.</ref>
• The Story of Peter Rabbit & Dick Whittington and His Cat, by Beatrix Potter, 1908<ref>Potter, Beatrix. The Story of Peter Rabbit & Dick Whittington and His Cat. Reilly & Britton. 1908.</ref>
• The Story of Little Black Sambo, and The Story of Topsy from Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Helen Bannerman, 1908, a book originally written in 1899, and is now disfavored.<ref>Bannerman, Helen. The story of Little Black Sambo. Reilly and Britton Co., 1908.</ref><ref>Robin Bernstein, Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights, (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 66-67.</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper, 1908<ref>Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper. Reilly & Britton Co. 1908</ref>
• Snow-bound, by John Greenleaf Whittier, 1909<ref>Whittier, John Greenleaf. Snow-bound. Reilly and Britton Co., 1909</ref>
• Hiawatha : a Poem, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1909<ref>Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. Hiawatha : a poem. Reilly and Britton Co., 1909</ref>
• The Raven and other Poems, by Edgar Allan Poe, 1910<ref>Poe, Edgar Allan. The Raven and other Poems. Reilly & Britton 1910.</ref>
• The Sea Fairies, by L. Frank Baum, 1911<ref>Baum, L. Frank. The Sea Fairies. Reilly & Britton, 1911</ref>
• A Man of Means, by P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill, 1914<ref>Wodehouse, P. G. Bovill, C. H. A Man of Means. Porpoise Books. 1914.</ref>
• A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, 1915.<ref>Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Reilly & Lee. 1915</ref>
• Andersen’s Fairy Tales, by Hans Christian Anderson, 1923.<ref>Anderson, Hans Christian. Andersen’s Fairy Tales. Cupples & Leon, 1923</ref>

Legacy

In 2018, "The Lost Art of Oz" project was initiated to locate and catalogue the surviving original artwork John R. Neill, W.W. Denslow, Frank Kramer, Richard 'Dirk' Gringhuis and Dick Martin created to illustrate the Oz book series. According to "The Lost Art of Oz" project, as he worked on illustrating the Oz books, Neill created "created approximately 4,000 pen and ink and watercolor illustrations. Only about 350 are known to have survived."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

External links

• Template:Official website – maintained by granddaughter Jory Neill Mason, (c) 2015 John R Neill Illustrator
• Biographical information on John R. Neill
• Lost Art of Oz. Original John R. Neill artwork from the Oz books
• Piglet Press entry on Neill
• Pulp Artists entry on Neill
• Template:Gutenberg author
• Template:Internet Archive author
• Template:LCAuth