Meet the author

William Nicholson.

Illustrator · United Kingdom · b. 1872

Sir William Nicholson (1872–1949): canonical British painter and illustrator behind the original 1922 The Velveteen Rabbit — defining woodcut-style picture-book illustration in print for a century.

Sir William Nicholson (1872–1949) was a British painter and illustrator, best known to children's-book readers as the original illustrator of Margery Williams's The Velveteen Rabbit (1922), providing the iconic woodcut-style spot illustrations that defined the book's first generation of readers. Nicholson's wider work was as a major British modernist painter and printmaker. The Velveteen Rabbit has remained in print for over a century with his original illustrations alongside later artists' editions. A canonical late-Victorian / early-twentieth-century British illustrator.