ABSTRACT
Rose Cecil O'Neill is a pillar in the history of illustration and popular culture in the United States; and although her achievements and artistic oeuvre were well-known and highly-esteemed during her own time, her modern-day legacy appears faint when compared to those of her male contemporaries. O'Neill drew advertisements and book illustrations, was recognized throughout Europe as a skilled sculptor and painter of fine art, and was additionally an author, poet, and prominent activist in the American suffragist movement. Preceding the rise of the Kewpies and just a year after the birth of Outcault's Yellow Kid, O'Neill's first comic strip, titled "The Old Subscriber Calls," appeared in Truth magazine. O'Neill told an interviewer for International Studio in 1922, "I am in love with magic and monsters, and the drama of form emerging from the formless". O'Neill's artistry reaches beyond those elfin dolls that have preserved her name.
