Elinore Blaisdell
Elinore Blaisdell was an American illustrator known for her work on Bulfinch's Mythology, Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, and A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad.
Early life and education
Blaisdell was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Edward Kendall Blaisdell and Sara Elizabeth Harris Blaisdell. Her father was a lumber dealer; both of her parents died when she was young. She was a student of Robert Brackman at the Art Students League of New York, and studied drawing with Naum Los. She attended Pratt Institute, and the Slade School of Fine Art in London.Career
Blaisdell began making illustrations for print in her childhood; she had a drawing published on the children's page of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1911. She wrote, illustrated, and edited books, mostly for young readers. From 1950 to 1979 she also designed hundreds of greeting cards, under several pseudonyms. She won the Julia Ellsworth Ford Prize from the Ford Foundation in 1939, for a children's book she wrote and illustrated, Falcon Fly Back, based on her late husband's research. She was a friend of writer Edith Hamilton in New York.Blaisdell moved to Bradford, Pennsylvania, in 1971, and to Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1979. In 1980 she showed eight of her paintings, mostly still lifes, at the Tremellen Gallery in Lancaster.