C. Walter Hodges

Cyril Walter Hodges, known as C. Walter Hodges (1909-November 26, 2004), was an English illustrator and author. Born in Beckenham and educated at Dulwich College and Goldsmiths' College, he 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, and Elizabeth Goudge ("The Little White Horse"). His own non-fiction book for children, "Shakespeare's Theatre", won the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration in 1964.

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 which proved popular on both sides of the Atlantic and led to several more examples. 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.

In 1936, Hodges fell in love wth and married Greta Becker, a ballet dancer. They were married for 63 years, until she died in 1999.¹

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.

elective Bibliography

* "Columbus Sails", 1939
* "Shakespeare and the Players", 1948
* "The Globe Restored", 1953
* "Shakespeare's Theatre", 1964
* "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
* "The Namesake", 1964
* "The Marsh King", 1967
* "Enter the Whole Army", 1999

¹ Nicholas Tucker, "C. Walter Hodges: Author-illustrator and Shakespeare scholar," The Independent. December 1, 2004.

References

* Eve, Matthew (2004). "C. Walter Hodges: a life illustrating history", "Children's Literature in Education" 35 pp 171-98.
* Tucker, Nicholas (December 1, 2004). "C. Walter Hodges: Author-illustrator and Shakespeare scholar," The Independent. [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/c-walter-hodges-728654.html]