Constellation Similarity Assertions

W.W. Denslow was born May 5, 1856, In Philadelphia, PA, and died March 29, 1915. He married Annie McCartney in 1882, divorced her, and married Ann Waters Holden in 1896. After divorcing her he married Frances Golsen Doolittle in 1903. He studied at the Cooper Union Institute and the National Academy of Design, both in New York City. Denslow was an illustrator of books and magazines and a designer of costumes and scenery. He illustrated a series of 18 Picture Books which he himself had written, and he illustrated L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and several other of Baum's books, no others in the Oz series. His drawings often showed 'an exuberant sense of Humor.' After several years of wandering and miscellaneous jobs, he married his first wife, Annie McCartney, but separated after a year. He moved to New York in 1885. In 1888 he became a newspaper artist for the Chicago Herald. He also became an alcoholic, and took the cure. 1890 found him in Denver, and for a while actually became a cowboy. In 1893 he returned to Chicago, and drew illustrations of the Columbian Exposition. In 1899 he did his first work with L. Frank Baum, but suffered a mental breakdown in 1901 and was sent to a Michigan sanitarium. He developed a rift with Baum, which led to a final split in 1902. He married his third wife in 1903, honeymooned in Bermuda, and later bought an island there. The next few years brought a series of theatrical failures, bringing on financial hardship which brought on a return to alcoholism, and forced him to mortgage his island. In 1915 he contracted pneumonia and died at the age of 58. Biographical sources: Something About the Author, v. 16

From the guide to the W.W. Denslow papers, 1902-1904, (University of Minnesota Libraries Children's Literature Research Collections [clrc])

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