Paul Woodroffe

Who was Paul Woodroffe?

Paul Vincent Woodroffe was a British book illustrator and stained-glass artist.

Woodroffe was born in Madras, one of nine children of Francis Henry Woodroffe, a judge in the Madras Civil Service, and his wife Elizabeth. The family returned to England in 1882 when his father died. In 1887, Paul was sent to Stonyhurst College.

In November 1892 he sat and passed the entrance examinations for the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, but in that year there were more successful applicants than places available, and he enrolled instead as a full-time student at the Slade School of Fine Art in Bloomsbury. At this time the family lived in Alton Castle in Alton in Staffordshire, sharing it with another Catholic family, the Moorats. Joseph Samuel Moorat was an accomplished writer of songs, and his music was said to have been the inspiration for much of Woodroffe's work as an illustrator.

Woodroffe's first illustrated book, entitled Ye Booke of Nursery Rhymes, was published in 1895 whilst he was still at the Slade, and on leaving the Slade he concentrated on further book illustration and then stained glass, and was to work with books and windows for the rest of his life.