Palmer Cox’s Brownies
/Palmer Cox (1840-1924) was a Canadian illustrator and author who created a series of Brownie books (humous verse books with comic drawings of mischievous but kind-hearted small creatures). His creations were so popular that one of the first hand-held cameras was named after them (the Eastman Kodak Brownie camera). His unique house in Quebec was named Brownie Castle. The characters are in individual costumes, sometimes very stereotypical…but they work together on their endeavors. The books depict positive interactions of very diverse individuals! The plaque on his tombstone reads: In creating the Brownies he bestowed a priceless heritage on childhood.
I browsed 6 Brownie books over the past couple of months – freely available on Internet Archive/Project Gutenberg.
