Frederick H. Townsend

Frederick Henry Townsend ARE (1868-1920) was a British illustrator, cartoonist and art editor of Punch.

F.H. Townsend illustrated the second edition of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre, A Child's History of England and Gryll Grange, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables in 1902. Also, an edition (1907) of Kipling's The Brushwood Boy and the 1903 edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four. Townsend also contributed cartoons to Punch, becoming its art editor for fifteen years from 1905 until his death.

He was a member of the Chelsea Arts Club (since its foundation in 1891) and the Arts Club (from 1908). In later life he became interested in etching and in 1915 he was elected as an associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers (ARE), having studied etching under Sir Frank Short about two years earlier.

Townsend was one of the leading illustrators selected by Percy Bradshaw for inclusion in his The Art of the Illustrator, which presented a separate portfolio for each of twenty illustrators.

He died on 11 December 1920 and was buried in a family grave on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.

Townsend illustrated the following works:

A Social Departure (1890)

An American Girl in London (1891)

Two Girls on a Barge (1981)

The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib (1893)

The Path of a Star (1899)

Those Delightful Americans (1902, by Sara Jeannette Duncan)

The Burglars' Club: A Romance in Twelve Chronicles

A Child's History of England

The Following of the Star: A Romance

Gryll Grange

Jane Eyre (second edition)

Jill: A Flower Girl

Mr. Punch at Home: The Comic Side of Domestic Life

The Old Maids' Club

Secrets of the Sword

The Joneses and the Asterisks: A Story in Monologue (by Gerald Campbell)