Collection: Howard Pyle

Howard Pyle, 1853 to 1911, was an American illustrator who trained a whole generation of them, N.C. Wyeth among his students. He is unusual because he wrote as well as drew, so in his The Story of King Arthur and His Knights the pictures and the words come from one man with one vision, which almost never happens.

The subject is oaths. What a man swears, what it costs him to keep it, and what he becomes when he breaks it. The knights are not tidy heroes. They fail, they are proud, they are punished for it, and the code stands over them regardless of how they behave.

Pyle wrote it for boys and did not condescend to them once. You put it down knowing what you would be willing to stand for.