Pauline Diana Baynes (9 September 1922 – 1 August 2008) was an English book illustrator, whose work encompassed more than 100 books, notably those by C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. She was born in Hove, Sussex.
For a few years Baynes was raised in India where her father was commissioner in Agra, but she and her elder sister came to England for their schooling. She eventually attended the Slade School of Fine Art, but after a year volunteered to work for the Ministry of Defence, where she made demonstration models for instruction courses. This work did not last long; she was soon transferred to a map-making department where she acquired skills later employed to good effect when she drew maps of Narnia for Lewis and of Middle-earth for Tolkien.
Baynes is probably best known for her cover and interior illustrations of The Chronicles of Narnia by Lewis, published by Geoffrey Bles in one volume annually from 1950 to 1956. Years later she provided some new illustrations for The Land of Narnia: Brian Sibley Explores the World of C. S. Lewis (HarperCollins, 1998), by Brian Sibley. (According to a School Library Journal review, "the artwork includes full-page illustrations in glowing color".)
When she began work on Narnia, she was already the chosen illustrator of Lewis' friend and colleague J. R. R. Tolkien. In her obituary for The Daily Telegraph, Charlotte Cory described how Baynes and Tolkien came to be associated:
In 1948 Tolkien was visiting his publishers, George Allen & Unwin, to discuss some disappointing artwork that they had commissioned for his novella Farmer Giles of Ham, when he spotted, lying on a desk, some witty reinterpretations of medieval marginalia from the Luttrell Psalter that greatly appealed to him. These, it turned out, had been sent to the publishers 'on spec' by the then unknown Pauline Baynes. Tolkien demanded that the creator of these drawings be set to work illustrating Farmer Giles of Ham, and was delighted with the subsequent results, declaring that Pauline Baynes had 'reduced my text to a commentary on her drawings'. Further collaboration between Tolkien and his Farmer Giles illustrator followed, and a lifelong friendship developed ... Later, when she showed him her artwork for a poster featuring Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, the author nodded approvingly and murmured quietly: "There they are, there they are."
Eventually her drawings would appear in Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Smith of Wootton Major, Tree and Leaf, and (after the author's death) in the poem Bilbo's Last Song, a poster in 1974 and a book in 1990. Baynes also painted the covers for the British 1973 one-volume and 1981 three-volume paperback editions of The Lord of the Rings, and produced illustrated poster versions of the maps from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
Her favorite of her own works was A Dictionary of Chivalry (Longman, 1968), edited by Grant Uden, an illustration project that required two years to complete. For that she won the Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject. In a retrospective citation, the librarians call it "a reference work that details the life and thoughts of Knights". As a reference book it is unique among the winning works and only one other Greenaway Medal in almost sixty years has been awarded for the illustration of nonfiction.
Four years later she was a commended runner up for the Greenaway, for Snail and Caterpillar (Longman, 1972) by Helen Piers.
Baynes illustrated The Borrowers Avenged by Mary Norton (1982), the fifth and final book in the Borrowers series (from 1952). (The original illustrator Diane Stanley was deceased. Baynes did the covers for a 1980s Puffin edition of the entire series.)