Donald Maxwell

Donald Maxwell (1877-1936) was an English writer and illustrator, still notable for his topographical paintings. Several of his works were displayed as prints in railway carriages.

Donald Maxwell was born in Clapham, Surrey (now part of London), the son of Dr Frederick Charles Maxwell, a Methodist clergyman and schoolmaster, and his wife Lucilla, also an illustrator. His father had founded the Manor House School in Clapham in 1876, where Donald's childhood was probably spent. He had at least four siblings: Stanley, Colin, and Gordon (1883-1942), who also became an author and illustrator, and a sister Maud. Both Donald and Gordon became keen yachtsmen and served as official Admiralty artists in World War I.

In 1907, he married Fanny Eveline Marie Morgan (died 1954) and lived with her initially in a yacht moored on the River Thames at Southend-on-Sea named "Puffin". They moved to Rochester, Kent and then to the adjacent village of Borstal, where their elder daughter Audrey Eveline Lucilla was born in 1909. A second daughter, Veronica Edith Stanley, was born in 1914. In 1930, Maxwell bought the large mid-18th century East Farleigh House near Maidstone in Kent, but moved to the late-18th century Goddington House in nearby Harrietsham shortly before he died in 1936, of septicaemia brought on by a chill. He was buried in East Farleigh churchyard.

Maxwell trained in London at the Clapham School of Art, the Slade School of Fine Art, and the Royal College of Art. He soon began writing and illustrating extensively for The Yachting Monthly and other magazines. In about 1909, he became a regular correspondent for the Daily Graphic and the illustrated weekly The Graphic and continued so until the latter closed in 1932. In later life, he wrote weekly illustrated articles for the Church Times.

Most of Maxwell's self-illustrated books were about voyages in (Europe, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and India) and later about the sights of Southern England. He also illustrated books by many other authors, including Hilaire Belloc and Rudyard Kipling, to whom his mother was related.  His vast output of more than 60 books, either written and illustrated or just illustrated by him, includes:-

My Kalendar of Country Delights 1903 (line illustrations)

Flowers of Parnassus Series 1904

Wordsworth's Grave 1904

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey 1904

Resolution and Independence 1904

The Building of the Ship 1904

The Log of the Griffin 1905

A Cruise Across Europe 1906 (Colour frontis only)

The Isle of Man 1909

Austria, Her People and their Homelands 1913

Adventures with a Sketch-book 1914

The Rhymes of A Motor Launch 1919

The Broads 1919

The Motor Launch Patrol 1920 (monochrome illustrations only)

The Last Crusade 1914-1918 1920

The Naval Front 1920

A Painter in Palestine 1921

A Dweller in Mesopotamia 1921

Unknown Kent 1922

Across India with the Prince 1922

The Prince of Wales' Eastern Book 1922

Unknown Sussex 1923

Unknown Surrey 1924

Wembley in Colour 1924

Ancient and Modern Buildings 1924

Unknown Essex 1925

Unknown Norfolk 1925

The Fringe of London 1925

Unknown Suffolk 1926

Sea and Sussex 1926

The Canterbury Pilgrim's Progress 1926

The Way to Arcady 1926

The Tower of London 1926

History with a Sketch-Book 1926

The New Lights o' London 1926

The Enchanted Road 1927

Just Beyond London 1927

Songs of the Sea 1927

Hills and the Sea 1927

The Book of the Clyde 1927

Excursions in Colour 1927

Unknown Dorset 1927

Unknown Somerset 1927

The Lure of the Countryside 1927

The Landscape of Thomas Hardy 1928

Adventures Among Churches 1928 (line drawings only)

The Road to France 1928

A Detective in Kent 1929

More Adventures Among Churches 1929 (line drawings only)

Rochester Historical Pageant 1931

East of Suez 1931

A Detective in Surrey 1932

A Pilgrimage of the Thames 1932

Travels in Hope 1932

A Detective in Sussex 1932

Sketching in Pen and Ink 1932 (line drawings only)

The Pilgrim's Way in Kent 1933

A Detective in Essex 1933

Colour Sketching in Chalk 1934

Told in the Watch Below 1934 (colour frontis only)

Famous London Churches 1934 (line drawings only)

Unknown Buckinghamshire 1935

Highwayman's Heath 1935 (colour frontis  only)

Rochester 1935

The Domesday Book of Kent 1936