Pauline Baynes

Pauline Diana Baynes
Portrait of Pauline Baynes
Born	(1922-09-09)9 September 1922 Hove, Sussex, England
Died	1 August 2008(2008-08-01) (aged 85) Dockenfield, Surrey, England
Nationality	British
Education	Slade School of Fine Art
Known for	Illustration, mainly children's books
Notable work	The Chronicles of Narnia
Awards	Kate Greenaway Medal 1968

Pauline Diana Baynes (9 September 1922 – 1 August 2008) was an English illustrator whose work encompassed more than 100 books, notably several by C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Pauline Baynes was born in Hove, Sussex. For a few years she was raised in India, where her father was commissioner in Agra, but she and her elder sister were sent back to England for their schooling. She spent much of her childhood in Farnham, studying at the Farnham School of Art (now the University for the Creative Arts) and eventually attended the Slade School of Fine Art, but after a year there she volunteered to work for the Ministry of Defence, where she made demonstration models for instruction courses. This work did not last long. She was soon transferred to a map-making department, where she acquired skills that she later employed when she drew maps of Narnia for Lewis and of Middle-earth for Tolkien.

Baynes is probably best known for her covers and interior illustrations for The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, seven books published, one volume a year, from 1950 to 1956 (the first five by Geoffrey Bles, the last two by The Bodley Head). Years later she provided some new illustrations for The Land of Narnia: Brian Sibley Explores the World of C. S. Lewis (HarperCollins, 1998), by Brian Sibley. (According to a School Library Journal review, "the artwork includes full-page illustrations in glowing colour".)

When she began work on the Narnia books she was already the chosen illustrator of Lewis's friend and colleague J. R. R. Tolkien. In her obituary for The Daily Telegraph Charlotte Cory described how Baynes and Tolkien came to be associated: