Hilary Knight

Marvelous full-page design for the second Eloise book. It shows Eloise and her Nanny caught in the middle of a busy Parisian street, with a bicycle, a car, a bus, and several motor bikes rushing by them.

In the published book this design is printed in reverse, probably so as to have the main figures facing towards the center of the book. Several bits of text in the original drawing have been removed in the published picture (e.g., advert on the bus), as they would have been printed in reverse. There are also some colored highlights added (Eloise’s ribbon is red, and the Paris cobblestone street is largely blue). It appears on page [27].

Original drawings for the Eloise books are almost never found in commerce (there is a rumor that they were mostly destroyed in a fire), and in forty years we have known only of a single cover vignette being offered for sale.