AustLit

A 'highly regarded and much loved teacher', Minnie I. Rowe wrote and illustrated two children's books: The Wand of Dawn [1918] and Gully Folk [1919]. While Rowe's work contributed to the popular 'Elves and Fairies genre', a didactic purpose underpinned her writing which was 'motivated by her desire to inform as well as delight a young audience in the Australian bush'.

Moving to Melbourne before the First World War, Rowe came from a family of six children who had a remote country upbringing. The experience of her formative years, combined with a complete lack of formal art training, has been said to 'account for the strange and naive quality' of her illustrations. Sometimes signing her work with the pseudonym 'Miro', Rowe's 'fantasy creations have a kind of elemental charm, although there is always a strong link with the closely observed world of nature'.

In addition to producing the above-mentioned works, Rowe provided illustrations for the Vivid History Readers published by Whitcombe and Tombs for Victorian Elementary Schools during the1920s; she also illustrated a work by Alex C. Welsh, Nancy in the Bush: and Other Australian Rimes for Children (1923).

(Source: Robert Holden A Golden Age: Visions of Fantasy: Australia's Fantasy Illustrators: Their Lives and Works, 1992)