ROBINSON, William Heath

"Your beautiful drawings give me a peculiar pleasure of the mind"

Born into a family of artists William Heath Robinson longed to become a landscape artist, but the practicalities of feeding a large family led him down the more commercial route of illustration. 

Today he is perhaps best known for his cartoons of zany inventions and his name entered the English Dictionary in 1912 with the definition "(of a mechanical device) absurdly complicated in design and having a simple function."

Heath Robinson was an accomplished water colour artist and his book illustrations display beautiful use of colours and delicate form. Illustrated versions of famous works are among his greatest achievements, including Shakespeare's Midsummer Nights' Dream and Hans Andersen' Fairy Tales, but he also wrote and illustrated his own wacky stories including Bill the Minder and Uncle Lubin.  In 1914 H.G. Wells wrote him a letter in which he stated "Your absurd, beautiful drawings... give me a peculiar pleasure of the mind like nothing else in the world." 

In 1933 he provided the illustrations to Norman Hunter's Professor Branestawm books, televised in 2014 with Harry Hill as the nutty profesor.

See below for first editions and illustrations by William Heath Robinson.