January and the tracing of the untraceable
Over four weeks since I last posted. Gosh. The last few weeks have been very odd, and almost entirely eaten up by sorting out the illustrations for my book, and attempting to manage our house sale. The illustrations have now gone off to be typeset, complete with captions. Doing the captions was a walk in the proverbial park compared with attempting to track down artists. Some artists have taken me weeks to track down. Here's how I tracked down the copyright holder for Janet and Anne Grahame-Johnstone (Puffin's 101 Dalmatians, Percy's Pony Annual; amongst many others). Google Grahame-Johnstone, giving thanks that it is not a common surname. The first things to pop up are obituaries. Both twins have died, and this means copyright in their illustrations, in those cases where it wasn't sold to a publisher, will probably have been left to a relative. If this is the case, I can sometimes find a descendant by fossicking about on the family history sites. Neither twin had c...