33 Facts About Nell Brinkley

Nell Brinkley was an American illustrator and comic artist who was sometimes referred to as the "Queen of Comics" during her nearly four-decade career working with New York newspapers and magazines.

Nell Brinkley was the creator of the Brinkley Girl, a stylish character who appeared in her comics and became a popular symbol in songs, films and theater.

Nell Brinkley was born to Robert Serrett Brinkley and May French Brinkley in Denver, Colorado in 1886 and in 1893 her family moved to the small town of Edgewater on Denver's western border, facing Sloan's Lake at Manhattan Beach.

Nell Brinkley had no formal arts training, and dropped out of high school to pursue a career in illustration.

Nell Brinkley did pen-and-ink drawings for The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News.

Nell Brinkley worked in Manhattan for the Journal, where she produced large detailed illustrations with commentary almost every day.

Nell Brinkley's art was featured in the prestigious magazine section, and the newspaper's circulation boomed.

Nell Brinkley later moved to New Rochelle, New York, a well known artist colony, home to many of the top commercial illustrators of the day.

Nell Brinkley soon became well known for her breezy and entertaining creations.

Nell Brinkley was assigned many interviews with the actress-wife, Evelyn Nesbit.

Nell Brinkley produced numerous courtroom illustrations printed in the Evening Journal and other Hearst newspapers.

Nell Brinkley had been on the staff of the Journal for only three months when the new trial began.

Nell Brinkley had come after two years on the Denver Post, bringing with her a talent for pretty-girl art that had not yet been matured into delicately fine-lined art-nouveau style for which she would become famous.

Nell Brinkley christened all the pretty girls she drew "Betty," and called all the boys "Billy".

Nell Brinkley's debut came on November 26,1907, and she was featured on a comics page that contained her illustrated panel that accompanied an article on actress Valeska Surrat.

Nell Brinkley wrote this article using her usual superlatives, and her next day's subject was Ethel Barrymore.

Nell Brinkley's art was now featured in Hearst newspapers all over the country and Americans were sitting up and taking notice of this new young artist.

Nell Brinkley wrote in the pop culture style of the early 20th century, producing breathless prose filled with run-on sentences, liberally sprinkled with dashes.

Nell Brinkley flew with Glen Martin in his new biplane and reported the daring swoopings and the landing for her readers.

Nell Brinkley became known for the charming text that accompanied her stories and reporting while she worked at the Evening Journal and other publications that included Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and Harper's Magazine.

Nell Brinkley produced many illustrated theatre reviews and profiles of mothers and young women in society, including later, in the 1930s First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Nell Brinkley's work was distributed to newspapers internationally by King Features Syndicate and Brinkley became the most prolific and famous romantic writer-illustrator.

Nell Brinkley was known for her idyllic designs in her artwork, and her female characters drew attention from readers.

The Nell Brinkley Girl was generally a young working woman who was often seen wearing lacy dresses and wearing her hair in curls, engaged in activities that were more independent than the general female standard.

Nell Brinkley's work was often considered to have a feminist slant.

The Nell Brinkley Girl became a national sensation, the topic of pop songs, poetry and theater.

The Nell Brinkley Girls collects Nell Brinkley's full-page color art from 1913 to 1940; her earliest adventure series, Golden Eyes and Her Hero, Bill; her romantic series, Betty and Billy and Their Love Through the Ages; her flapper comics from the 1920s; her 1937 pulp magazine-inspired Heroines of Today and unpublished paintings, along with an introduction by the book's editor, Trina Robbins.

Nell Brinkley's earliest series, Golden Eyes and Nell Brinkley's Hero, Bill, is a comic chronicling the adventures of a girl known as Golden Eyes during World War I It ran from March 1918 through February 1919 and featured full page illustrations in color.

Nell Brinkley's last published work was a Sunday series begun in 1937 entitled, Heroines of Today.

Nell Brinkley wrote of women in action during WWII, using machine guns and operating tanks in Soviet Russia, and in Spain.

In 1944, Nell Brinkley died after over 30 years of entertaining fans from the "most read newspapers".

Nell Brinkley's death went largely unnoticed under the crush of WWII news, but The Associated Press reported she passed in a New Rochelle hospital on the night of October 21,1944 after a long illness.

Nell Brinkley was inducted into Friends of Lulu's Women Cartoonists Hall of Fame in 2008.