Helen Sewell and Mildred Boyle

About Helen Sewell and Mildred Boyle

Helen Sewell and Mildred Boyle were the American illustrators of the first editions of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, published by Harper & Brothers between 1932 and 1943, before Garth Williams reillustrated the series in 1953.

Helen Moore Sewell (27 June 1896 to 24 February 1957) was born at Mare Island, California, studied at the Pratt Institute in New York, where she worked with the sculptor Alexander Archipenko, and began by designing greeting cards. She illustrated her first book in 1923. She illustrated Little House in the Big Woods (1932), Farmer Boy (1933) and Little House on the Prairie (1935) on her own, shaping Ma and Pa from an early daguerreotype of Charles and Caroline Ingalls. She also illustrated Langston Hughes's The Dream Keeper (1932) and won a Caldecott Honor for Alice Dalgliesh's The Thanksgiving Story (1954).

Mildred Boyle is far less documented: reference sources record no reliable biography or dates for her. From On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937), when Sewell's health and other commitments limited her time, Boyle took on most of the artwork, though Sewell's name stayed on the books. The joint credit appears on Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939), The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie (1941) and These Happy Golden Years (1943), each a Newbery Honor book. The pair also illustrated a 1936 edition of Mary Mapes Dodge's Hans Brinker.

For collectors

Only the Harper & Brothers printings issued before the uniform 1953 edition carry Sewell's and Boyle's drawings; from 1953 Harper replaced them throughout with Garth Williams's illustrations. Copies of the five later titles credited to both artists are the original-format Little House books.