To most of us, Rose O'Neill is best known as the creator of the Kewpie doll, perhaps the most widely known character in American culture until Mickey Mouse. Prior to O'Neill's success as a doll designer, however, she already had earned a reputation as one of the best-known female commercial illustrators. Her numerous illustrations appeared in America's leading periodicals, including Life, Harper's Bazaar, and Cosmopolitan. While highly successful in the commercial world, Rose O'Neill was also known among intellectuals ...
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To most of us, Rose O'Neill is best known as the creator of the Kewpie doll, perhaps the most widely known character in American culture until Mickey Mouse. Prior to O'Neill's success as a doll designer, however, she already had earned a reputation as one of the best-known female commercial illustrators. Her numerous illustrations appeared in America's leading periodicals, including Life, Harper's Bazaar, and Cosmopolitan. While highly successful in the commercial world, Rose O'Neill was also known among intellectuals and artists for her contributions to the fine arts and humanities. In the early 1920s, her more serious works of art were exhibited in galleries in Paris and New York City. In addition, she published a book of poetry and four novels. Yet, who was Rose Cecil O'Neill? Over the course of the twentieth century, Rose O'Neill has captured the attention of journalists, collectors, fans, and scholars who have disagreed over whether she was a sentimentalist or a cultural critic. Although biographers of Rose O'Neill have drawn heavily on portions of her previously unpublished autobiography, O'Neill's own voice--richly revealed in her well-written manuscript--has remained largely unheard until now. In these memoirs, O'Neill reveals herself as a woman who preferred art, activism, and adventure to motherhood and marriage. Featuring photographs from the O'Neill family collection, The Story of Rose O'Neill fully reveals the ways in which she pushed at the boundaries of her generation's definitions of gender in an effort to create new liberating forms.
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Add this copy of The Story of Rose O'Neill; an Autobiography to cart. $112.50, very good condition, Sold by Ground Zero Books, Ltd. rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Silver Spring, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1997 by University of Missouri Press.
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Very good in Very good jacket. xi, [3], 154 pages. Introduction. Editor's Note. Footnotes. Illustrations. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Ink stamp on fep. Rose Cecil O'Neill (June 25, 1874-April 6, 1944) was an American cartoonist, illustrator, artist, and writer. She rose to fame for her creation of the popular comic strip characters, Kewpies, in 1909, and was also the first published female cartoonist in the United States. She exhibited interest in the arts at an early age, and sought a career as an illustrator in New York City. Her Kewpie cartoons, which made their debut in a 1909 issue of Ladies' Home Journal, were later manufactured as bisque dolls in 1912 by J. D. Kestner, a German toy company, followed by composition material and celluloid versions. The dolls were wildly popular in the early twentieth century, and are considered to be one of the first mass-marketed toys in the United States. O'Neill continued working, even at her wealthiest, exploring many different types of art. She learned sculpture at the hand of Auguste Rodin and had several exhibitions of sculptures and paintings in Paris and the United States. O'Neill has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. In 2022 at San Diego Comic Con, Rose O'Neill was inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame as a Comic Pioneer. Miriam Formanek-Brunell is associate professor of history and director of women's and gender studies at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. She is the author of Made to Play House: Girls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930. To most of us, Rose O'Neill is best known as the creator of the Kewpie doll, perhaps the most widely known character in American culture until Mickey Mouse. Prior to O'Neill's success as a doll designer, however, she already had earned a reputation as one of the best-known female commercial illustrators. Her numerous illustrations appeared in America's leading periodicals, including Life, Harper's Bazaar, and Cosmopolitan. While highly successful in the commercial world, Rose O'Neill was also known among intellectuals and artists for her contributions to the fine arts and humanities. In the early 1920s, her more serious works of art were exhibited in galleries in Paris and New York City. In addition, she published a book of poetry and four novels. Yet, who was Rose Cecil O'Neill? Over the course of the twentieth century, Rose O'Neill has captured the attention of journalists, collectors, fans, and scholars who have disagreed over whether she was a sentimentalist or a cultural critic. Although biographers of Rose O'Neill have drawn heavily on portions of her previously unpublished autobiography, O'Neill's own voice--richly revealed in her well-written manuscript--has remained largely unheard until now. In these memoirs, O'Neill reveals herself as a woman who preferred art, activism, and adventure to motherhood and marriage. Featuring photographs from the O'Neill family collection, The Story of Rose O'Neill fully reveals the ways in which she pushed at the boundaries of her generation's definitions of gender in an effort to create new liberating forms.
