Special Collections’ exhibit features ‘Little Colonel’ author, photographer
November 29th, 2007
A Kentucky Idyll: the work of Pewee Valley photographer Kate Matthews and author Annie Fellows Johnston
Through Feb. 16
Photographic Archives and Rare Books galleries, ground floor, Ekstrom Library, Belknap Campus.
Exhibit hours: Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., except Dec. 24–Jan. 1 when the galleries are closed. Admission is free and open to the public.
Kate Matthews took this photo of Mary Johnston, Annie Fellows Johnston’s stepdaughter.
Vintage books by Annie Fellows Johnston and photographs by Kate Matthews from the University of Louisville’s Special Collections are on exhibit.
Johnston wrote one of the most popular series of children’s books in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and based the characters on people she knew from Pewee Valley and Louisville, Ky. The series chronicled the escapades of a feisty Kentucky youngster with a bad temper who was nicknamed “The Little Colonel.”
The Little Colonel books were translated into more than 40 languages. They inspired such merchandise as dolls, clothing, games, cards and paper dolls and the 1935 movie “The Little Colonel” with Shirley Temple and Lionel Barrymore.
Johnston began writing after her husband’s death to support her three stepchildren. She wrote more than 40 books and contributed occasional stories to periodicals such as the “Youth’s Companion”.
Matthews illustrated Johnston’s “The Little Colonel” (1895) and “The Land of the Little Colonel” (1929). Her work also was published in “Youth’s Companion,” “Illustrated American,” “Cosmopolitan” and “Good Housekeeping.” Johnston created Miss Katharine Marks, a character in another series, after Matthews.
The exhibit is in conjunction with “The Little Colonel: A Romantic Vision of Life Long Ago in Oldham County” at the Oldham County History Center in La Grange, Ky., and a Pewee Valley community sponsored “Little Colonel” weekend Feb. 9-10. Western Kentucky University also has a display on The Little Colonel at its Kentucky Library & Museum.
Related Links
The Little Colonel:
A Romantic Vision of Life Long Ago in Oldham County
UofL Special Collections: The Photographs of Kate Matthews
