C. Walter Hodges
Cyril Walter Hodges (1909 – 26 November 2004), was an English illustrator and author.
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[edit] Illustration and writings
Born in Beckenham, Kent and educated at Dulwich College and Goldsmiths' College, Hodges spent most of his career as a freelance illustrator. For many years he did line drawings for the Radio Times. Among the writers for children with whom he collaborated as an illustrator were Ian Serraillier, Rosemary Sutcliff (The Eagle of the Ninth), Rhoda Power (Redcap Runs Away), and Elizabeth Goudge (The Little White Horse).
During a year spent in New York he was encouraged to write, as well as illustrate, Columbus Sails, a work of historical fiction for children. It proved popular on both sides of the Atlantic. This led to several more examples, including The Namesake and The Marsh King, about Alfred the Great. His non-fiction book for children, Shakespeare's Theatre, won the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration in 1964.[1]
[edit] Globe Theatre
A lifelong love of theatre led to him becoming an authority on the construction of the Globe and other theatres of Shakespeare's time. He also designed costumes and scenery for the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool (1928–30) and for the Mermaid and St George's Theatres in London in the 1950s.
Hodges argued in one of his books that "the theatre as an institution is the pre-eminent arrangement whereby human beings work out the models of their own conduct, their morality and aspiration, their ideas of good and evil, and in general those fantasies about themselves and their fellows which, if persisted in, tend to eventually become facts in real life. If this is so, and it would be hard to deny, then the theatre must be seen as a most powerful instrument in the social history of mankind, and its own history must therefore be allowed a corresponding importance."[2]
Hodges's Shakespearean expertise led Wayne State University theatre department chair Leonard Leone to invite him to Detroit in the late 1970s and early 1980s to work on Leone's proposed reconstruction of the Globe Theatre on the Detroit River. In the wake of the city's financial suffering due to the collapse of the auto industry, the project fell apart in 1982.
In 1936, Hodges fell in love with and married Greta Becker, a ballet dancer. They remained married until she died in 1999.[3]
[edit] Partial bibliography
- Columbus Sails, 1939
- Shakespeare and the Players, 1948
- The Globe Restored, 1953
- Shakespeare's Theatre, 1964.
- The Namesake, 1964
- The Marsh King, 1967
- Shakespeare's Second Globe: The Missing Monument, 1973
- The Battlement Garden - Britain from the Wars of the Roses to the ages of Shakespeare, Andre Deutsch, 1979, ISBN 0-233-96938-1
- Enter the Whole Army, 1999[4]
[edit] References
- ^ Obituary in The Stage, 18 January 2005: Retrieved 19 February 2012.
- ^ Quoted from Shakespeare's Second Globe on the Shakespeare Out Loud blog: Retrieved 19 February 2012.
- ^ Tucker, Nicholas (December 1, 2004). "C. Walter Hodges: Author-illustrator and Shakespeare scholar". The Independent. Independent Print, Ltd.. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/c-walter-hodges-728654.html.
- ^ Reviewed at length here: Retrieved 19 February 2012.; an extract appears here: Retrieved 19 February 2012.
- Eve, Matthew (2004). "C. Walter Hodges: a life illustrating history", Children's Literature in Education 35 pp 171–98.
