H. R. Millar

H. R. Millar
Born	Harold Robert Millar 1869 Dumfries, Dumfriesshire, Scotland
Died	1942
Nationality	Scottish
Known for	Children's Literature

Harold Robert Millar (1869 – 1942) was a prominent and prolific Scottish graphic artist and illustrator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is best known for his illustrations of children's books and fantasy literature. "His work...has a lively, imaginative charm and a distinctive sense of design."

A native of Dumfriesshire, Millar first pursued civil engineering before deciding upon an artistic career. He then studied at the Wolverhampton Art School and the Birmingham School of Art, and established his career as a magazine illustrator with Punch, Good Words, and other periodicals of the day.

Millar illustrated fables for the Strand Magazine, and anthologies of tales, The Golden Fairy Book, The Silver Fairy Book, The Diamond Fairy Book, and The Ruby Fairy Book. He illustrated books by a wide range of British authors of his time, including Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Rudyard Kipling. He had an extensive working relationship with E. Nesbit, and has been called "the most sympathetic and perhaps the most talented of her illustrators."

Apart from fantasy and children's books, Millar drew pictures for works like Kate Lawson's Highways and Homes of Japan (1910) and Arthur Radclyffe Dugmore's African Jungle Life (1928). Millar was a noted collector of Eastern art and exotic and ancient weapons, and employed his interest and knowledge in these areas in his artwork.

A partial list of the books Millar illustrated includes:

— among various others.

Frontispiece: They saw a small, brown ... pointy-eared person ... step quietly into the Ring

Weland's Sword: Then he made a sword

Young Men at the Manor: 'At this she cried that I was a Norman thief'

Young Men at the Manor: Said he, 'I have it all from the child here'

Young Men at the Manor: 'Sir Richard, will it please you enter your Great Hall?'

The Knights of the Joyous Venture: 'And we two tumbled aboard the Dane'

The Knights of the Joyous Venture: Thorkild had given back before his Devil, till the bowmen on the ship could shoot it all full of arrows

The Knights of the Joyous Venture: 'So we called no more'

...
Wikipedia