Lothar Meggendorfer Animates The Inanimate

Deep within a secret atelier in Munich, Germany, circa 1880-1900, a mad artist with a mechanical turn of mind was bringing life to the inanimate. A photo survives of his first success:

"It's alive! It's alive!"

People, however, were none too pleased about his experiments so, in a desperate attempt to avoid a torch and pitchfork-bearing posse of villagers seeking vengeance and on the prowl for his blood, he changed his name, underwent extensive cosmetic surgery, turned away from humans and began working on books. Books that had life, and were animated. Books that moved. But were no threat to families and children. Children could, indeed, delight in them. The burghermeister could sleep easily, the Prefect of Police, relax.

"The book is the life, Mr. Renfield." 

(Whoops. Sorry, wrong story).

If you want life in your books, look no further than Dr. Frankenstein, er, Lothar Meggendorfer's movable books. Specifically,  one of his rarest, a book that, according to ABPC, has not come to auction within the last thirty-five years, with no copies, per OCLC  and KVK, in institutional holdings worldwide.

"It's alive! It's All Alive!"
(First U.K. edition, scarce).

What's the big megillah with Meggendorfer?

"Quite simply, Meggendorfer turned the mechanical toy book into a work of art. He was the supreme master of animation: every gesture, both animal and human, is conveyed with uncanny precision via the primitive but - in his hands - versatile medium of moveable paper parts. but the pictures do more than move; they come passionately to life…Meggendorfer captures the essential gesture in his moving pictures and that is his genius..." (Maurice Sendak, The Genius of Lothar Meggendorfer. p. 1).

Lothar Meggendorfer (post-surgery).

"While Meggendorfer was an inventor, working with paper, he was also an artist of great talent," says modern master, Waldo H. Hunt, "who insisted upon handling most of the details required of multicolored lithography...But what really set Meggendorfer apart, and what has continued to fascinate collectors of his work, are the ingenious mechanizations that he achieved, not just for their own sake but to fulfill and enhance the comic or dramatic effect that he had in mind" (Introduction to The Genius of Lothar Megendorfer).

“There is little doubt that the most elaborate and ingenious movables ever produced were those of the German Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925) made during the 1880s and 1890s…the mechanisms and operations of Meggendorfer’s books—not to mention the originality of his figures—are far superior to any others published before or since.…'They were marvels of ingenuity…Usually several movements took place at the same time on the same page' (Eric Quayle)…The devices that operated the various figures in Meggendorfer’s books consisted of a series of inter-connecting cardboard levers sandwiched between the coloured illustration on the front of the oblong leaf and the dummy pasted behind it. The animated limbs and heads were cut-out models on the front of the picture, and moving the tab set the whole scene in motion…Needless to say, such was the delicacy of Meggendorfer's machinery that if a child pulled too hard the whole thing could be ruined beyond repair” (Haining, Movable Books, pp. 65-73).

Pull tab at bottom and the cows bob the trough.

From All Alive.

Despite Meggendorfer's charming admonition that "Men and creatures here you find/Are lively and amusing;/You fingers must be slow and kind/And treat them well while using," the books were routinely subjected to rough treatment by the enchanted children who enthusiastically played with them.

Given the circumstances, it's something of a miracle that any have survived in collectible condition.

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MEGGENDORFER, Lothar. All Alive. A Movable Toybook by Lothar Meggendorfer. London: H. Grevel & Co., [n.d., ca. 1885-90].

First English edition of Lebener Tierbilder (1884). Large folio (12 15/16 x 9 5/16 inches; 329 x 235 mm.). [17], [1, blank] pp. Lithographed preface and eight full-page chromolithographed plates (included in pagination), each of which has a movable tab to set the scene in motion. Each plate with a leaf of text opposite.
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Meggendorfer resources:

The Originality and Artistry of Lothar Meggendorfer, University of Virginia.

Aleph-Bet Books, the respected childrens lit. specialists, has as complete a bibliography of Meggendorfer as can be found in English, based upon books they have now, or have had in the past.
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From The Tippy-Top Floor Of The Plaza Hotel To NYPL: Eloise Makes A Move

New York Public Library better ramp up security: a gum chewing six-year-old holy terror is about to take up permanent residence in their archive. Yes, Eloise is prepped and ready to write on the walls and skate down the halls, thanks to the only man who'll ever own up to being her father, illustrator Hilary Knight. On November 3, 2009, Knight donated his personal papers, including sketches for over 60 books, theatrical posters, contracts, and publicity materials to the Library.

Knight is the co-creator of Eloise, along with author Kay Thompson. Thompson has long held the spotlight as Eloise's literary mother, but no less a luminary than Maurice Sendak, author/illustrator of Where The Wild Things Are, credited Knight with making her famous: "My first happy response to Eloise was entirely due to the brilliant, iconic images. That brazen, loose-limbed, delicious little girl monster is Hilary Knight at his best."

Eloise was born in 1955, but she is forever six years old. She lives in the penthouse of the Plaza with her nameless nanny, her pug dog Weenie, and her turtle, Skipperdee. Eloise's father is never seen or spoken of in any of the five books in which she appears. Her mother is perpetually absent. She never goes to school. (She does have a "boring boring boring" tutor who she listens to, but "not very often.") All of her meals are charged to Room Service. (A typical order is: "Planked Medallion of Beef Tenderloin with Fresh Vegetable Maison, two raisins, one strawberry and one clams in season.") She would be the original anti-heroine of children's literature, except that author Thompson insisted that the Eloise stories were: "Books for precocious grown-ups." And nobody with a brain challenged Kay Thompson. Including Hilary Knight.

According to Marie Brenner of Vanity Fair, Knight and Thompson were introduced by a mutual friend in 1954. Thompson had already created the character of Eloise, which was based more than a little on the author herself. At first the relationship between author and illustrator was a pleasant one, according to Thompson: "Hilary and I had immediate understanding.... We wrote, edited, laughed, outlined, cut, pasted, laughed again, read out loud, laughed and suddenly we had a book." Shortly before the publication of Kay Thompson's Eloise (make a note of the exact title--it's important), Knight caught his first glimpse of the less than friendly side of his collaborator. At a meeting with their publisher, Knight was given a one-page contract. He recalls: "I totally trusted her. I signed it without really looking at it. I totally signed my rights away." The contract gave Thompson the copyright to Knight's drawings, and 70 percent of the royalties not just on Kay Thompson's Eloise but on any future books that featured the Eloise character.

Knight and Thompson went on to collaborate on three more Eloise books, but their relationship grew increasingly strained. In 1966 Knight arrived in Rome to work with Thompson on fifth Eloise story. Knight had drawn hundreds of sketches of Eloise in an overflowing bathtub, creating a flood which engulfed everyone from visiting movie stars to the Plaza's manager. Thompson hung his drawings haphazardly snarled:"Think of this as a movie." She would compliment Knight's work at night, but the next morning, he recalled: "That drawing that was so glorious would have a big clot of rubber cement on it, and there would be a piece of paper over the drawing." At Thompson's request the book was yanked just before publication. It remained unpublished until after the author's death in 1998, when her estate released it as Kay Thompson's Eloise Takes A Bawth.

Knight wasn't the only one to feel the wrath of Thompson. A few years before Thompson took up permanent residence in the heavenly version of the Plaza, the New York City's Books Of Wonder featured a window display celebrating Eloise's 40th anniversary. An employee working late one night received a phone call from Thompson inquiring: "What is the title of the book in the window?" "Well, it's Eloise," replied the hapless clerk. Thompson shouted: "That is incorrect! The title of the book is Kay Thompson's Eloise!!" Thompson's obituary in The New York Times put her age at "between 92 and 95." But like Eloise, it appears she was in many ways perpetually six years old.

Posted by Nancy Mattoon

Rare Maurice Sendak "Where the Wild Things Are" Original Art Surfaces

A standard, letter-size envelope featuring Where The Wild Things Are original art by its sender, Maurice Sendak, has recently surfaced.

The envelope (3 1/2 x 6 1/2 in; 90 x 165 mm), postmarked New York Jan 27, 1966, is autograph addressed by Sendak to fellow Caldecott Medal award winner, Nonny Hogrogian, with Sendak's autograph name and return address to the flap. Considering its journey through the United States Postal Service and forty-three year life, it is in miraculous condition.

Original artwork by Sendak associated with and near contemporary to the publishing of his classic Where the Wild Things Are is exceedingly rare.

The envelope, delightfully illustrating a celebratory parade of Wild Things, was sent by Sendak, who won the Caldecott in 1964 for Where the Wild Things Are, to Hogrogian to congratulate her for winning the prestigious award for Always Room For One More.


The Caldecott Award, named for nineteenth-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott, is presented annually to the illustrator of the most distinguished American picture book for children published in the United States. The winner is announced in January.

Nonny Hogrogian (b. 1932) is the award-winning illustrator of children’s books from New York. She has won the Caldecott Medal a record three times, in 1966 (Always Room For One More), 1972 (One Fine Day), and in 1976 for The Contest.

"Nonny worked for years behind the scenes, consciously cultivating her art. Surely she was lucky in her associations during those early days…Later she would be associated with other famous writers and their books, among whom was Maurice Sendak during the great period that produced Where The Wild Things Are…[Hogrogian is] one of the most talented and interesting figures…in the history of children's literature" (Introduction by Charles Seluzicky, Catalogue 43 Nonny Hogrogian, Doris Frohndorff 1986).

The Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia has the finest collection of original Maurice Sendak art in the nation.
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