"She lay there for hours" Illustration Original Art -Signed lower
rightFanny Cory was one of the first woman artists to have a syndicated
comic strip. She was a prolific illustrator who also created art for
books and magazines. This illustration, captioned on the back. "She lay
there for hours" was published in an unidentified issue of Century
Magazine in the early 20th century. Unframed.

Fanny Young Cory (October 17, 1877 – July 28, 1972) was a cartoonist
and book illustrator best known for her comic strips Sonnysayings and
Little Miss Muffet. Cory was one of America's first female syndicated
cartoonists.

She went by several pen names: F. Y. Cory, F. Cory Cooney and Fanny
Cory Cooney but eventually used Fanny Y. Cory as her professional name.
She sometimes used FYC as a signature on her early work.
Early life and education

Fanny Young Cory was born in Waukegan, Illinois, on October 17, 1877,
the daughter of Benjamin Sayre Cory and Jessy Salter McDougall.[2] As a
child, she drew or sketched on anything she could find.[3] When Cory
was ten years old, her mother died of tuberculosis. Two years later,
Cory's father moved the family to Helena, Montana.[4]

Cory was 14 when she began to study under artist Mary C. Wheeler, the
art supervisor of the Helena school system. In 1894, her older brother
Jack and his wife Bertha invited her to stay in New York with them. Two
years later, Cory enrolled at the Metropolitan School of Fine Arts. The
following year, she was accepted by the Art Students League. Although
Cory was a top student, the family had little money to spare for her
education. In addition, Cory wanted to help care for her sister Agnes,
who had tuberculosis. So, Cory left school.[3]
Illustration career
Cory illustrated this poem for St. Nicholas in 1915.

Wanting to support herself and her ailing sister Agnes, Cory began
selling her drawings. She made her first sale in 1898 to The Century
Magazine.[3] As her career blossomed, Cory did covers and interior
illustrations for magazines including Century, Harper's Bazaar, Life,
Scribner's, The Saturday Evening Post and St. Nicholas.[2]

Cory illustrated numerous books including a 1902 edition of Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.
She illustrated L. Frank Baum's books The Master Key and The Enchanted
Island of Yew.[5] She illustrated Marion Hill's The Pettison Twins
(McClure, Phillips & Co, 1906). Cory illustrated William L. Hill's
Jackieboy in Rainbowland (Rand McNally & Company, 1911).[6] Between
1913 and 1926, Cory decided to focus on raising her children, and she
put her career on hold.

To relax, Cory began painting whimsical watercolors of fairies,
flowers, birds, and other small animals. She made one for each letter of
the alphabet, each one accompanied by a poem. She called them her
"Fairy Alphabet." Cory considered these paintings her finest work,
although she said she had no plans for them. The Montana Historical
Society museum exhibited the paintings in the 1950s, but it was not
until the 1980s that The Fairy Alphabet was published.[3] The book was
re-released by Riverbend Publishing in 2011.[7]
Comic strips

Cory's first attempt at cartooning, Ben Bolt, or, The Kid You Were
Yourself, flopped. But in the 1920s, needing money to send her children
to college, Cory decided to try again.[8] She began producing a
single-panel cartoon called Other People's Children.[9]

In 1926, Cory began her favorite comic, Sonnysayings, distributed by
the Ledger Syndicate. It featured a precocious 5-year-old boy and his
view of the world. Sonnysayings appeared in many newspapers throughout
the United States, Canada, Australia, and Scotland, under the name of
Fanny Y. Cory.[2] By 1935, Sonnnysayings had moved to King Features,
where it ran until Cory's retirement in 1956. The cartoon was so popular
that E. P. Dutton released a book collection in 1929.[3]

In 1935, Cory launched Little Miss Muffet, syndicated by King
Features until June 30, 1956.[10][11][12] Designed to compete with
Little Orphan Annie, the cartoon featured the adventures of orphan Milly
Muffet and her dog. (Little Miss Muffet was written by Tecla Scheuring
from 1940 to 1946.)[13] A Little Miss Muffet comic book was published in
1948 and 1949 by Best Books.
Personal life

Cory returned to Montana in 1902 after the death of her sister
Agnes.[14] Her brothers, Jack and Bob, wanted to try their luck at gold
mining, and they invited their sister to join them. The siblings had
three cabins built northeast of Helena, not far from the mine. Cory
called hers a "studio."[3]

In 1904, Cory married Fred Cooney and moved to his ranch on the
Missouri River near the community of Canyon Ferry. She embraced ranch
life, creating her illustrations with her drawing board in her lap as
she sat by the window in the living room of the ranch house. She planted
large gardens, canned the produce, and decorated her canning labels
with illustrations. The couple had 3 children: Sayre, Robert, and Ted.
In 1951, Cory was named Montana Mother of the Year. Cory retired in
1956. She moved to the Puget Sound area to be near her daughter, Sayre.
She died in 1972 in Stanwood, Washington.[3]

Her brother J. Campbell Cory also became a cartoonist.[15] Fanny Cory
was related to Kate Cory, particularly noted for her photographs and
paintings of the Hopi
Bio from Wikipedia