Winsor Zenic McCay, comic-strip artist, illustrator, animator, and editorial cartoonist, is best remembered as the creator of Little Nemo in Slumberland, considered by many the most beautifully drawn and visually original comic strip produced in the United States. He also established animation as a film art form and had a distinguished career as an editorial cartoonist. Although he neither drew nor wrote any children's books, the imagery in Little Nemo and his other comic strips made him widely popular among the children of his time, and he had a profound impact on the art of subsequent book illustrators, especially Maurice Sendak, and animators such as Walt Disney.

Born in Spring Lake, Michigan, on 26 September 1871 (some accounts claim 1869), McCay was the only son of a lumberman and real-estate agent Robert McCay and his wife Ganett Murray McCay. In 1888 he studied art at Ypsilanti Normal College with John Goodison (1834-...