Hilda Brearley was a teacher, poet and author of just one novel for children, Castle in the Sun (Thomas Nelson, London: 1947), from which these illustrations by Albert Wainwright are taken. Brearley first met Wainwright twenty years earlier when they were introduced by a mutual friend and this novel and its illustrations were long in the production, so much so that the book wasn't published until after Wainwright's death. Unusually for Wainwright's book work, these are actually illustrations of the story as opposed to many of the books he 'decorated' for Sydney Matthewman at The Swan Press were his contributions did tend towards the decorative rather than the illustrative. The real added joy of this book is the colour dustjacket design, also by AW, the copy in front of me at the moment doesn't have a jacket but I have one on the way and no doubt I will share it here in due course: couldn't wait to show these off though.
And for those of you with an interest in Wainwright who may have wondered what he looked liked, at the bottom of the post is a snapshot of him cutting quite a dashing figure taken from a page in one of his notebooks.
