THE ANIMAL BOOKS

Towards the end of the Second World War Alan Lane of Penguin Books decided that the future for British children's books lay with non-fiction, educational titles. Noel Carrington commissioned Hilary to write and illustrate a book about Extinct Animals, negotiating for her to have access to the Natural History Museum to carry out the necessary research. Hilary visited the Museum’s Library 28 times between December 1944 and April 1945.

Hilary’s first contact with Noel Carrington had been a proposal for a children’s story about a dragon. He had rejected this, but Hilary was a determined person, and her time in the library of the Natural History Museum gave her the inspiration for a second attempt. This time she succeeded, and Freddy and Ernest was published by Carrington’s own imprint Transatlantic Arts in 1946, the same year that Extinct Animals appeared.

A letter from Wilfred Edwards, Keeper of Geology, thanks her for “sending a copy of your book on Extinct Animals and also the other book with the charming caricature of myself.”

Research for the subsequent Living Animals involved sketching animals at the London Zoo, something that Hilary had been doing regularly since she was a teenager. The book, in a larger portrait format than Extinct Animals was published by Cassell’s in 1954.

Changes in printing technology and the market for books effectively ended the demand for illustrators to do their own lithography, and Hilary did not publish any more books. She was by this time fully engaged with bringing up two young children and taking care of a large garden.