Yes, you might not have heard of
Pauline Baynes, but she was the original illustrator of C.S. Lewis’ enchanting
Narnia books. I was fortunate enough to attend a primary school in the early
1970s whose library hadn’t been updated since the 1950s. I picked up the
library’s copy of “Prince Caspian” because I liked the look of the front cover,
and from then on I was hooked. Pauline Baynes came to the attention of C.S. Lewis
through the recommendation of his good friend, and fellow Oxford don, J.R.R.
Tolkien, (no mean illustrator himself) for whom Pauline Baynes had illustrated
his highly enjoyable “Farmer Giles of Ham” tale.
I love the cleanness of her work, and
her effortless ability to conjure up epic landscapes with a few strokes of the
pen. As a kid, one of the first sketches I made that I was ever really proud of
was a copy of a Pauline Baynes illustration of a little sad dragon from “The
Voyage of the Dawn Treader”. This is a copy of an illustration from “The
Magician’s Nephew”, not the first to be written, but the first part of the
series in terms of the ongoing narrative. An utter joy.
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