Career as illustrator
Quite apart from her colour plates for the earlier books by May Donaldson, Isabel Bonus enjoyed a successful career as illustrator for a variety of other publications.
The following listing is inevitably unsystematic and haphazard, but helps us to appreciate her talents – perhaps slightly stylised, but much in demand.
Plays for amateur performance adapted for girls' schools, several published by Swan Sonnenschein & Co, London:
- Tennyson's Princess, Elsie Fogerty, (1901)
- The Queen's Jest and Two Other Plays, Elsie Fogerty, (1908)
- The Antigone of Sophocles, Elsie Fogerty, (1908)
- Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Elsie Fogerty, (1911)
- Euripides' Alkestis, Elsie Fogerty, (1924)
And others:
- The Meaning of the Months, Ven E E Holmes B D (Archdeacon of London), (1910)
- Tales from The Earthly Paradise, selected and arranged in prose, William Morris and William John Glover, (1913)
- The Moon-Boat, Alice M Brown, (1914)
- Benedicite: A Devotional Commentary on the Song of the Three Children, Harry Lovett Hubbard (1924)
The authoress Elsie Fogerty1, 2 was a highly regarded teacher of voice, diction and drama, her Central School of Speech and Drama being alma mater to a great many well-known theatrical celebrities. And of course costume illustration was perhaps the strongest rôle in Isabel's own repertoire. At the risk of sounding patronising, I could also suggest that the theatre is a well-established refuge for talented individuals with insecure or bruised personalities.
Harry Lovett Hubbard (1890 – 1941) was a clergyman (High Church at least, possibly Roman Catholic) who authored a number of semi-mystical religious books in that era.