Canadian born Palmer Cox (1840-1924) illustrated and wrote rhyming stories about the wee little people called Brownies that traveled at night, did good deeds and had fun in the process of their adventures. Brownies are part of Scottish or English fairy lore. The Brownies appeared in children’s magazines (St. Nicholas, and Wide Awake Magazine) and then several books. They were extremely popular at the time but as any thing else, slowly died out.
The Brownies in illustrations are always busy and in groups. Their personality lies on how they dress and their action but when they speak, you have no idea who is doing the talking, you can only use your imagination. The Brownies mostly have adventures when no one is looking keeping their world a secret one that we are able to know about through these books and illustrations. Palmer Cox had a huge imagination to create all of this Brownie world for us to be a witness too.
I am fortunate enough to have bought a small pocket version of the Brownies Adventures when they went into reprint years ago. They certainly are a fun group to read about. Then when I saw the images as stamps, well, I just had to have my own. So if you are a reader of this blog, be aware that the Brownies will lurk here from time to time making your visits more "whimsical".
The Kodak company took a liking to the word “Brownie” and named a camera after these wee folks.
The Brownies also worked advertising many products while they were so popular.
Brownie Points -- noun phrase -- a fancied unit of credit and approval (New Dictionary of American Slang) More definitions at Urban Dictionary.
Even the Girl Scouts have a group called “The Brownies”. Usually these girls are aged second or third grade. They have a theme song they sing:
We are the happy Brownies, we are the busy elves./
We love to help each other and of course we help ourselves./
We wake up each morning with a smile upon our face./
And if even things don’t go right, we keep that smile in place!
So let us all hope that these magical fun little spirits stop on by and visit you one night and do good deeds to help us out.
Pages by the late James Dalton great grand nephew of Palmer Cox.
Wikipedia article on Palmer Cox
Toonopedia -expansive article on the history and copycats. (This is a great site containing an enormous history of cartoons in general.)
StampCamp - Get your own Brownie images to stamp out and leave every where.
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