Notes

In 1927, the editor of The Outspan asked Dorothy Kay to produce illustrations for the stories in the new weekly magazine, and for the next eighteen years, she regularly produced from two to four illustrations a week in charcoal, with white gouache accents, on artist’s illustration board. Kay was an absolute stickler for accuracy and posed and sketched family and friends in the inevitable action poses required by the adventure stories. She spent hours researching accurate detail, such as military insignia or the correct way to tie the knot in a noose, in the Public Library or at the zoo if a story included animals, and she amassed vast quantities of material that might conceivably be helpful, which she stuck into voluminous scrapbooks for future reference. In the 1940s, Kay gradually withdrew from producing illustrations and passed the torch to her daughters Joan and Patricia, who were subsequently to have their own work published in Outspan magazine on their mother’s recommendation to the editor.