Teddy Tail, Daily Mail, c. 1917
Charles James Folkard was born in Lewisham, London, on 6 April 1878, the son of Edward C. Folkard, a merchant's clerk, and his wife Caroline, and studied at St. John's Wood School of Art and Goldsmith's College School of Art. He married Amelia Edwards in 1908. He worked as a stage magician for a time, designing his own programmes, and started selling illustrations to Little Folks and the Tatler. In 1910 he illustrated a gift book edition of Swiss Family Robinson, which led to many more such books for the publisher A & C Black.
In 1915 he created Teddy Tail, once of the earliest British newspaper strips, for the Daily Mail, which he drew until the late 1920s, after which it was drawn by his son Harry, Herbert Sydney Foxwell, Arthur Potts, Tony Hawes and Bill Glenn. After he stopped drawing Teddy Tail, Folkard continued illustrating children's books, including several for Dent's Children's Illustrated Classics series. He died in Hailsham, Sussex, on 26 February 1963.
References[]
- Alan Clark, Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors, The British Library, 1998, p. 59
