Rose O’Neill

Cartoonist, artist and writer Rose O’Neill couldn’t have known when she won her first art content at thirteen that she would go on to create a character that would make her a millionaire. That’s precisely what happened in 1909 when an issue of Ladies Home Journal introduced the world to O’Neill’s “Kewpie” characters.

Until this time, O’Neill had been doing well since achieving the distinction of being the first woman cartoonist (in America) to be published. This happened on Sept. 19, 1896, when her artwork found its way into True Magazine. She was hired by the humor magazine Puck as the only woman on the staff. Her work was also displayed in the pages of Life and Harper’s.

After O’Neill’s first marriage ended in divorce, she married Harry Leon Nelson, whom she’d met at Puck. They made a good team, and O’Neill contributed illustrations to her husband’s novels. In 1904 she published her own self-illustrated novel, The Loves of Edwy.

It wasn’t long after that when she began to have dreams about a new character she’d like to create. She described it as “a sort of little round fairy whose one idea is to teach people to be merry and kind at the same time.” She even had a name for them, based on Cupid. She would call her little fairy-like creations, “Kewpies.”  

When O’Neill’s Kewpie comics appeared in Good Housekeeping and Woman’s Home Companion, they exploded. People loved them, and it didn’t; ‘t go unnoticed. The German porcelain company J.D. Kestner stepped up to acquire the license to manufacture her Kewpies as dolls in 1912, essentially making O’Neill a millionaire.

O’Neill would continue to draw her Kewpies for more than twenty-five years before retiring.

Rose Cecil O’Neill (June 25, 1874 – April 6, 1944)