During his short life Randolph Caldecoot became one of the most popular and respected illustrators of his era. Working at the height of Victorian Aestheticism and industrialisation, he turned for inspiration to nature and the stable rural society of eighteenth-century England. His skill lay in translating minutely observed scenes of people, animals and every-day events into drawings and paintings executed with a masterly economy of line and an unsurpassed feeling for colour. He had a rare humour which saw all the folly and vanity of man, yet portrayed them with frankness and love. Rodney Engen charts Caldecott's life from his humble beginnings in a small village and his early life as a bank clerk. His talent soon brought him commissions from the Graphic, Illustrated London News and The Pictorial World and he was a regular contributor to these and periodicals throughout his career. Caldecott's most important contribution to English illustration, however, was his famous series of childre