For more than a quarter century N. C. Wyeth was the country's most prestigious illustrator of books and magazines. His pictures for the classic tales of romance and adventure are now classic illustrations, familiar to generations of readers. Some of the best-known characters in literature have become nearly inseparable from the images he created.

Born in Needham, Massachusetts, Newell Convers Wyeth was the first son of Andrew Newell Wyeth, owner of a grain business in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth, granddaughter of the Swiss-born head of the Harvard Botanical Gardens. The Wyeths descended from Welsh stock (transplanted to North America in 1645) and were witness to every important event in American history. With the Zirngiebels came hardy French-Swiss blood fresh from the great immigrant experience of the nineteenth century. Convers, as he was called, grew up in a family that revered and nourished this rich and colorful heritage...