Clifton Johnson (January 25, 1865 – January 22, 1940) was an American author, illustrator, and photographer. He published some 125 books in many genres including travel books, children's stories, and biographies, many with his own illustrations and photographs.
Early life and marriage Clifton Johnson was born on January 25, 1865, in the village of Hockanum in Hadley, Massachusetts. He was the oldest child of Chester Lorenzo Johnson and Jeanette (née Reynolds) and had three siblings: two brothers, Charles (b. 1867) and Henry R. (b. 1868), and one sister, Jeanette L., known as Nettie (b.1872). He attended a local, one room schoolhouse, and then, the Hopkins Academy in Hadley. He dropped out at age 15 and spent five years working at the Bridgman & Lyman bookstore in Northampton before moving to New York City to study at the Art Students League of New York.(1940, January 23) Clifton Johnson of Hockanum Dies in Brattleboro. "Springfield Republican", p.1.
The Johnson family farm was located on the shore of the Connecticut River and, as a boy, Johnson enjoyed all that the river offered; boating, fishing, bathing, and skating in winter. Along with other boys, he enjoyed freeing logs that were caught in the river's curving shores after they were sent down-current from Canadian forests. During his early life, he barely traveled outside of Hockanum which "was hardly big enough to deserve the name ‘village,’"Hartt, M.B. (1901). "Clifton Johnson and His Pictures of New England Life" The New England Magazine, Vol. 24, p.662. and he only traveled as far as Holyoke or Northampton to peddle berries. He was a self-described "hoodlum" and along with his friends "[w]e just delighted to steal apples, watermelons, and everything else."LeBlanc, B. (July 21, 1981). Hadley's Clifton Johnson: chronicler of his times. Daily Hampshire Gazette, p. 10. As a student, he disliked mathematics and classics preferring history and natural science, especially botany for which he had a great passion and allowed him to be outdoors.
He married Anna Tweed McQueston, a local school teacher, on May 25, 1896, and went on a honeymoon (which doubled as a work trip for Clifton) to England, Scotland, Ireland, and France. The couple had six children: Margaret (b. 1898), Arthur (b. 1900), Roger (b. 1901), Irving (b. 1905), later a sailor and captain of the "Charmian" as well as his own three ships all named Yankee, on which he and his wife Electa circumnavigated the world seven times, Katherine (b. 1911), and Oliver (December 15, 1902 – March 10, 1903) who died in infancy.Nelson, A. (Ed.). (1928). Who's Who in America 1928–1929 (Vol. 15), p. 1149.
Career Even though he received little formal education, Johnson became an accomplished author, photographer, artist, editor, and folklorist. The anthropologist Carl Withers considered him a "skillful and often graceful writer, and … a foremost pioneer photographer of folk life … He was gifted to extraordinary degree with a ‘listener's ear.’ Johnson's involvement with folklore, as collector and reporter and as editor of folktale collections for children, is that of a social anthropologist interested in American folkways and folklore."Johnson, C. (1963) Introduction. What they say in New England. In C. Withers (Ed.) New York: Columbia University Press, pp. vii–viii.
His first commission, to illustrate Wonderful deeds and doings of little giant Boab and his talking raven Tabib, a children’s book by Ingersoll Lockwood, came in 1890, followed by Little Captain Doppelkop by the same author a year later. Also starting in 1890, an ambitious project by the Northampton, MA based Wade, Warner and Co. Publishers asked Johnson to supply photographs for Picturesque Hampshire, to which he contributed hundreds of photographs and drawings.Johnson, C. (1963) Introduction. What they say in New England. In C. Withers (Ed.) New York: Columbia University Press, p.x. Five volumes followed in the series. The 1890s were also filled with books about country life in New England, a topic close to Johnson's heart and in which he was immersed all his life. The New England Country (1892) was successful enough to bring commissions from different publishers which resulted in The Farmer's Boy (1894), The Country School in New England (1895), and What They Say in New England (1896). His Old-time Schools and School-books (1904) was a scholarly study of early educational methods and materials based on examination of many early textbooks and especially Puritan Massachusetts. Writing in 1999, Martin Brückner referred to it as "old but still useful" when "a more detailed publishing history of geographic literature circulating in the early republic" was required.Brückner, M. (1999 June). Lessons in Geography: Maps, Spellers, and Other Grammars of Nationalism in the Early Republic. American Quarterly Vol.51, No.3, p. 339.
His first few books prompted publishers to send Johnson on trips to England, Scotland, and Ireland to take photographs for reissues of classic popular books by the likes of J. M. Barrie, Jane Barlow, Richard Jefferies and Ian Maclaren. On his second trip in 1896, he also visited France. He returned with hundreds of photographs, drawings, and notebooks filled with impressions, and, with the exception of France, folklore he gathered from the locals. From these he produced books about each country: Among English Hedgerows (1899), Along French Byways (1900), The Isle of the Shamrock (1901), An English Village (1903)'An English Village'(a new edition of 'Wild Life in a Southern County') by Richard Jefferies (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1903) and The Land of Heather (1903) as well as magazine articles. A special emphasis in the English books is put on children, their games, festivals, and everyday activities.
Writing Clifton Johnson had an interest for everyday life of people in the countryside and did oral history before the term existed. He arrived at writing through photography. He wrote "to explain the pictures."Crawford, M. C. (November 20, 1904). An artist turns author to explain his pictures. Sunday Boston Herald, p.6. Clifton Johnson published articles for the Daily Hampshire Gazette and the Springfield Republican before publishing his first book, The New England Country (1892). He wrote travel guides, children's books, and biographies. His series of travel books, Highways and Byways of America, published in the first two decades of the 20th century and covering forty-eight states focused especially on rustic life.
He preferred byways to the highways as he stated in the preface to New England and its Neighbors: "The general title of Highways and Byways, adopted for the American series, indicates very well the writer's itinerary; but, as for the highways, it is their humbler features I love best, and it is these I linger over in my pictures and descriptions. Wherever I go the characteristic and picturesque phases of the local farm environment always appeal strongly to me, and in what I have written I have tried to convey to others the same interest I have felt, and at the same time have endeavored to give a clear and truthful impression of the reality".Johnson, C. (1902). New England and its Neighbors, p. xv. Elsewhere he writes: “My rambling has been in the fields and woodlands, my stopping-places in the little villages and scattered farmhouses, and I write almost wholly of rustic life and nature as I saw them in my desultory journeyings.”Johnson, C. (1905) Highways & Byways of the South, p. xv. He also wrote books on New England country life, including The Country School (1893), The Farmer's Boy (1894), What They Say in New England (1897), which Herbert Halpert described as "excellent,"Halpert, H. (1947). American Regional Folklore. The Journal of American Folklore, Vol.60, No.238, p. 357. and New England: a Human Interest Geographical Reader (1917).
Referring to his writing, Johnson highlighted his approach of simply talking with people: “My method? Oh, it is all simple enough. I go out a good deal like a reporter, though I do not so proclaim myself, and talk along with the people I meet, getting friendly with them, you know, until suddenly they say something which is unusual or picturesque. Then out comes my notebook. Sometimes they ask me why I am writing down what they have said, and I tell them it is because it has interested me. Usually that suffices.”Crawford, p.6.
According to Carl Withers, his travel books showed evidence of the life history method and read "like the field records of an anthropologist." He had a keen ear for details of speech patterns which he recreated in his notes, and showed great skill in suggesting differing social levels of speech and dialects. He used the same method when writing the biographies of John Burroughs, Hudson Maxim, and George M. Stearns.Johnson, What They Say in New England, pp. xiv–xv.
Johnson's interest in folklore and his natural ability to talk to children and create an understanding with them led to creating works in the growing and lucrative children's market. Similarly patterned to and perhaps inspired by the works by Andrew Lang, he created a series named for trees: The Oak Tree Fairy (1905), The Birch Tree Fairy Book (1906), The Elm Tree Fairy Book (1908), and The Fir Tree Fairy Book (1912). He followed these with a fifteen volume series of Bedtime Wonder Tales.
Despite their appeal as well written stories, Johnson's moralistic tales tend to reflect his own Puritan values and prevailing educational standards although he highlights the progressive system which sought to be more attractive to children rather than education by “rote and rod.”Withers, Carl. (1963 Fall). “I’ve Been Reading What They Say in New England.” Columbia University Forum. Vol.6 No.4, pp. 39–42. Inspired by Felix Adler's sentiment that "falsehood, gluttony, drunkenness, and evil" should not be a significant part of children's tales, Johnson edited out many cruelties. In his version of the Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf is killed by grandma with an axe and Little Red Riding Hood is not harmed. His Mother Goose Tales My Children Love Best (1917) omits some harsh sentiments and are supplanted with rhymes that seem to have come from the New England folklore. Despite these changes and differences, Carl Withers found "his versions sound more like oral, rather than literary narratives," and even though "[p]resent standards regarding anthologies and the simplification of great literature and folktales for the children's book market are different from his (but only rarely better.)"Johnson, What They Say in New England, pp. xix–xx.
Photography
An avid photographer, Johnson photographed life with a focus on country life and people. The focus on rustic life made his photographs especially valuable. He bought his first camera in 1888 as an aid to his drawings but after a publisher purchased his photographs, Johnson decided to focus on them as much as on drawings. He especially focused on his native Hadley and the New England states but also took photographs in the forty eight continental states as well as numerous cities and villages in France, England, Scotland, and Ireland. He illustrated a number of well-known books including Charles Dickens's Child's History of England (1898), three-volume White's Natural History of Selborne (1895), R. D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone (1900), and David Thoreau's Cape Cod (1908), Maine Woods (1909), and Walden (1910).Who's who in American art 1564–1975 (1999). Sound View Press, (Vol. 2), p.1738.Who Was Who in America 1897–1942. (1942). The A. N. Marquis Company, vol. 1, p.637.