May Wilson Preston was an insightful illustrator best remembered for her humorous drawings of upper-class life. In 1915 Vanity Fair named her one of a dozen of the most distinguished illustrators in the world. Success came slowly for Preston, after years of hard work and determination. From the start of her career in 1901 she experimented with different types of stories and styles of drawings until she developed a successful formula that she used well into the 1930s.

May Wilson was born in New York City on 11 August 1873. She was the only child of John J. and Ann Taylor Wilson, and she enjoyed, in the words of an anonymous critic writing in the July 1910 Craftsman, "the sympathetic appreciation of finely intelligent parents." She showed an interest in art early, and in 1889 she was one of the founding members of the Women's Art Club (later renamed the National Association of Women...