Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon
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Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon (24 July 1826 - 16 February 1874) was a teacher and artist known for her talents during the 1860s in Ontario, Canada. In 1966, her most comprehensive work, An Illustrated Comic Alphabet, was published by librarians and artists who admired her work. Five years later, an annual award for illustration of Canadian children's literature published in Canada, the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award, was named for her.
Born at Littlehampton, Sussex, England, she was the oldest daughter of Edward Howard Howard-Gibbon and Amelia Dendy. She was educated in private schools during the employment of her father at the College of Arms. From her earliest years, Howard-Gibbon enjoyed drawing freehanded sketches, some of which survive today. She is believed to have studied French, German, and Art while in Paris, France, and Stuttgart, Germany. She was the first of the Howard-Gibbon siblings to emigrate to Ontario, where she began teaching in St. Thomas. She later moved to Sarnia and continued to teach children there for many years. Howard-Gibbon moved back to England in 1873 to claim her inheritance from her uncle Matthew Charles Howard-Gibbon, and became ill. She died in Lambeth, and was later buried with her father at Saint Nicholas Churchyard in Arundel.
During Howard-Gibbon's time in Ontario, she created watercolor portraits and sketches of several friends and family members. In 1859, she sketched a children's alphabet book which she later gave to a friend, Martha Poussette. Many years later Poussette's family donated the book to the Toronto Children's Library. Finally published as An Illustrated Comic Alphabet (1966) by Oxford University Press in Toronto and Henry Z. Walck in New York, it is the oldest known children's picture book by a Canadian artist.
