McManus, Blanche

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Blanche McManus' Street of Mosques, Tunis, 1908.

Blanche McManus (born 1870) was an American writer and artist.

[edit] Biographical Sketch

Little is known regarding the writer/artist Blanche McManus, except that she was born on Talladega Plantation, in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, in 1870, studied in London and Paris, and returned to the United States in 1893 when she established a studio in Chicago. By 1895, she was authoring and illustrating a series of children's books, including The True Mother Goose (1895), The Voyage of the Mayflower (1897) and How the Dutch came to Manhattan (1897). In those same years, she was producing illustrations for other authors books, often working on three or four books at one time.

Around 1900, she travelled with her collaborator and husband, Francis Miltoun (Milburg Francisco Mansfield), throughout Europe and North Africa. Their collaboration led to a series of travel books, fully illustrated by McManus. M. F. Mansfield was a writer and had an apparently short-lived (ca. 1897 to ca 1900) publishing house [M. F. Mansfield and Co., later to be known as M. F. Mansfield and A. Wessels.] The couple is probably best known for a series of illustrated travel books which incorporated the newly invented automobile within a typical travelog of the period. Blanche McManus' sketches and watercolors of the people they met and views of architectural/natural scenes adds an interesting element to the books.

She and her husband lived in Paris when not travelling, and Blanche McManus continued illustrating for publishers back in the United States. Little is known about the rest of the Mansfield's time together. Research has shown that Blanche McManus was in Toulin, France, in 1911 by the signing of a book contract (for The American Woman Abroad) which was witnessed by her husband. A power of attorney was sent by Blanche McManus from Nice, France, in the 1910s, to her sister in Louisiana. It is believed M. F. Mansfield may have died in Europe, [possibly during WWI?] It is thought Blanche McManus returned to Louisiana in the 1920s.

Blanche McManus appears to have worked with three primary publishers – E.R. Herrick & Co., M.F. Mansfield & Co (later M.F. Mansfield & A. Wessels), and L. C. Page & Co. – with the odd book put out by other publishing houses. The gaps in her publishing are as interesting as the works themselves. McManus published her first work at the age of 25, and by 30 had illustrated 15 books, 6 of which she also authored. Clearly, some relationship sprang up between the publisher Mansfield and herself in the late 1890s and then there is a gap of 4 yrs before she published or illustrated again. Could this have been a honeymoon period and early family life, with the couple settling in Europe? Both Mansfields must have kept their American publishing contacts, as L.C. Page & Co. hired them for a total of 25 books between 1903 and 1927 (23 of these books would be published between 1903 and 1912). The last 2 books appear to be a reissuing of Rambles in Normandy and Rambles in Brittany, but that is unconfirmed as of this writing.

[edit] Publishing History

[edit] External links

• The True Mother Goose
• The Voyage of the Mayflower
• Told in the Twilight: Stories to Tell Children
• Bachelor Ballads
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• Cathedrals of Southern France
• Our Little English Cousin
• Our Little French Cousin
• Our Little Scotch Cousin
• Our Little Dutch Cousin
• Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces
• The Spell of Algeria and Tunisia
• Our Little Egyptian Cousin
• Our Little Belgian Cousin
• The American Woman Abroad