Katharine Pyle

Katharine Pyle (November 23, 1863 – February 19, 1938) was an American illustrator and author, primarily of books for young people, an influential member of the Pyle artistic family, active in Philadelphia during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A native of Wilmington, Delaware, and a social activist, she published several accounts of Delaware's colonial history.

Early life

Katharine Pyle, The Wonder Clock (1887) poem and "decoration" Born in Wilmington, Delaware, Katharine was the youngest child of William Pyle, a leather manufacturer, and Margaret Churchman Painter, an "amateur" writer. Her older brother (by ten years) was author and illustrator Howard Pyle.

Both Howard and her parents encouraged Katharine's artistic inclinations, though the modest style of the Quaker household dictated that Katharine not be given too much praise. Howard wrote Margaret of then 13 year old Katharine: "Katie is doing wonderfully well. But do not tell her that I said so. For I think it would be even better to speak slightingly of her verses than to praise them unduly. It would be the greatest misfortune to her should she ever become satisfied with her work."

Katharine was educated at Philadelphia's Women's Industrial School (1883) and at the Drexel Institute, where she attended her brother's illustration classes, followed by a course of study at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women.

Her first published works were poems in St. Nicholas magazine (1880) and Harper’s Bazaar (1884). From 1886, she collaborated with Howard on The Wonder Clock, published in Harper’s Young People in 1886–1887 and as a book in 1887. During this period, Katharine was taxed with the responsibility of the Pyle household (Margaret Pyle had died in 1885), escaping this role only with her 1892 move to New York City to enroll at the Art Students League.

Pyle published The Counterpane Fairy in 1898, the book generally regarded as cementing her reputation.

The Golden Age of Illustration in America The period between 1880 and 1914 is regarded as the Golden Age of Illustration in America, when the proliferation of expense-saving improvements in printing practices and a "newly literate public," aligned. For women, particularly, this opened opportunities in a new market for their labor, and Katherine Pyle, as Howard Pyle's younger sister, was in a unique position to benefit from this trend. Howard Pyle was teacher and "sometime mentor" to a "whole school of American women illustrators," including Ethel Franklin Betts, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Charlotte Harding, Violet Oakley, Sarah S. Stilwell, Ellen Bernard Thompson (Pyle), and Jessie Wilcox Smith. Some viewed these challenging later adaptations as evidence that Pyle possessed an "even more versatile genius" than her brother, extolling the author's work in discreetly softening "the darkness and brutality" in favor of "the heroism, the gorgeousness, the religious fervor and the magic" of the tales, others did not find her touch so adept.

Selected works