Claude Allin Shepperson (1867–1921) was born in Beckenham, Kent, and studied at Heatherley’s art school and in Paris. He is best known today for his elegant drawings of young women in Punch – a type known at the time as the "Shepperson girl" – and as the artist who drew the fairies that were presented as real fairies by the perpetrators of the Cottingley hoax. Shepperson was a prolific illustrator who worked in many magazines of the 1890s, notably The Strand, Pearson’s Magazine, The Idler and The Windsor Magazine. His style is characterized by a lightness of touch that recalls George Du Maurier, but he was also a versatile, inventive designer whose illustrations are powerful responses to his literary source material. His images for H.G. Wells’s "The First Men in the Moon" (The Strand, 1900–1901) exemplify his sensitive, interpretative approach. Not content with whimsy, his work for Wells is by turns expressionistic, realistic, dramatic and unsettling. — Simon Cooke
Illustrations for H. G. Wells’s "The First Men in the Moon"
- The effects of Cavorite
- Cavor's sphere
- The interior of the sphere
- The sphere on the moon
- The sphere on re-entry
- The Selenites
- The Land Ironclads
Related Material
Bibliography
Peppin, Brigid, and Lucy Micklethwait. Dictionary of British Book Illustrators: The Twentieth Century. London: John Murray, 1983.
Created 18 March 2026