John Farleigh (1900–1965) is most famous for his London Transport posters and his illustrations for The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God by George Bernard Shaw (1933) which stimulated a revival of interest in black-and-white illustration. He was the key figure in establishing the Crafts Centre of Great Britain after the Second World War and was an activist against shoddily designed machine-made products. Works illustrated by Farleigh are prized by book collectors. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is the repository of 106 of his wood engravings.

The British graphic artist was a strong influence on Eleanor Milne. Farleigh taught her wood engraving at the Central School in England in 1946. Because photographic reproduction was coming to be regarded as more reliable and less expensive than illustrations handcrafted by artists, Milne reports that he told her "you would be lucky to have a job" in book illustration in the second half of the twentieth century.

EXTERNAL LINK:
Illustration by Farleigh from The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God.

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