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Deaf illustrator created beloved children’s classics

Ellsworth Toohey
Nov 21, 2025
∙ Paid

Andrew Lang

Leonard Leslie Brooke became one of England’s most celebrated children’s book illustrators despite a devastating setback: typhoid fever contracted while traveling in Italy left him permanently deaf as a young man. Born in Birkenhead in 1862, Brooke studied at the Royal Academy Schools and started his career working in oils. But his genius flo…

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