Charles Howland Hammatt Billings was a major figure in that group of mid-nineteenth-century artists who developed a native school of American book illustration. Although his designs for a multitude of wood engravings in obscure fiction and regional New England sketches are little known today, he-like F. O. C. Darley, John Sartain, John G. Chapman, and others of his generation-also produced a small but significant body of designs that have become popular archetypes in important works. The modern reader of classic American literature probably subconsciously recognizes these designs.

Young "Charley" Billings was the eldest son of the large family of Ebenezer and Mary D. Janes Billings of Milton, Massachusetts. Hammatt Billings married twice. His first wife, Sarah Mason, died around 1859; shortly thereafter he married Phoebe Warren. Neither marriage produced children.

Billings's interest in drawing and art manifested itself early. He was barely ten when he used paper puppets and...