12. Clifton Bingham.
George Henry Thompson, illustrator.
The Animals’ Trip to the Sea: Being a True and Veracious
History of the Eventful Voyage of the S. S. “Crocodile” from
Nowhere in Particular to Anywhere in General.
London/ New York: Ernest Nister/ E. P. Dutton & Co., [1905].
This picture book describing a motley group of animals’ day
trip to the seaside was the first in a series of highly successful
collaborations between Bingham and the illustrator George Henry Thompson
(1853-1953).
Thompson’s illustration of a mortified hippo suggests that body
anxiety has plagued people as soon as
bathing suits became relatively commonplace. The illustrations were
also issued as sets of postcards, which were as popular as the books.
Because Thompson did not always
receive credit on the title pages of the books he illustrated, he is
not an especially well-known figure. However, he deserves to be recognized
as one of the more amusing children’s book illustrators of the
late Victorian and Edwardian period.
There is an interesting article about Thompson in Dawn and
Peter Cope’s Postcards from the Nursery: The Illustrators
of Children’s Books and Postcards 1900-1950 (London: New
Cavendish Books, 2000).