The World of Tasha Tudor

Tasha Tudor was intentional in living an old-fashioned, low-tech life. Biba Kayewich

Celebrated children’s book author and illustrator Tasha Tudor lived an unconventional, old-fashioned life on New Hampshire and Vermont homesteads that fueled her astounding creative output, filling it with life, light, mirth, and nostalgia for bygone days. Tasha’s New England upbringing shaped her writing, artwork, and lifestyle in profound ways.

A Whimsical Childhood

Tasha Tudor was born in 1915 to William Starling Burgess and the accomplished portrait painter Rosamund Tudor. She was particularly devoted to her nanny, Mary D. Burnett—whom she called “Dady.” Tasha’s parents divorced when she was 9 years old , and she went to live with family friends in Connecticut. There, her creative tendencies blossomed under the influence of her foster mother, who was a playwright, along with her foster sister and the neighborhood girls. Together, the girls acted out characters from the books they read. They enjoyed dancing and theater.

Tasha’s education was sporadic, mostly informal, and revolved heavily around reading books on her own or with friends and mentors. During her time in Connecticut, she also learned about the natural world and rural living. She soon fell in love with traditional agricultural life and had a passion for it for the rest of her life.

As a teen, Tasha began keeping animals, beginning with a cow that she tended with great care. Her love for the natural world is reflected in the fact that one of her first books was a handmade volume about New England flowers. At age 20, Tasha already showed great skill as an artist. She decided early on to be an illustrator. A little illustrated narrative about a girl and her runaway pumpkin—“Pumpkin Moonshine”—was Tasha’s first published book. In addition to her visual art, Tasha developed skill with needle arts, including making a linen shirt completely from scratch–she grew the flax, extracted the fibers, spun the yarn, wove the fabric, and sewed the shirt herself.

A Simple, Busy Life

In 1938, Tasha married Thomas L. McCready. With her signature love for all things antique, she wore a family heirloom as her wedding dress: her great-grandmother’s India-mull gown. The couple went on to have four children together. In the 1940ss, Tasha moved with her young family to a 1789 New Hampshire homestead in rather poor condition. Tasha fell in love with it during a country drive, and her contagious enthusiasm and capacity for dreaming of an idyllic country life led to the family acquiring the property. It had no electricity, running water, or heating (other than wood stoves). But this suited Tasha perfectly.

As Bethany Tudor recalled in her biography of her mother, “Drawn from New England,” “My mother often said she wanted to live a life similar to that of New Englanders in the past century.” She intentionally lived according to more old-fashioned methods, preferring a simple, low-tech mode of life.

As a young mother working to restore and operate the homestead, illustrate books, sew, cook, clean, and can, Tasha learned to multitask. As she put it, “When you’re stirring the jam you can read Shakespeare.”

Despite the hard work, Tasha made time to play with the children and arrange activities for them, creating a warm, vivacious home environment. Her eldest son, Seth, said, “I have none but happy memories of my childhood and Tasha. She was a wonderful, loving, caring mother who worked hard to support her family, and, like many mothers, provided interesting, varied activities and experiences for her children.” The family enjoyed making dolls and puppets, putting on plays, and reading classic works of literature by the flickering light of the evening fire. Tasha taught the children the domestic skills and traditional crafts that she was herself so dedicated to. Tasha’s daughter Bethany wrote, “Busy as she was, she found time to enrich our lives. I do not recall that there was ever a dull moment!”

Tasha and her children enjoyed playing with intricate and detailed doll houses with furnishings and clothing made by hand. The family made up extensive narratives surrounding the life of the doll family, providing them with their own postal service, magazine, mail-order catalog, and letters—all of this handmade, of course, by Tasha. She also made clothes for herself and her children by hand, most of it in the style of the late 19thh or early 20th century.

Throughout her busy domestic life, Tasha continued to write and illustrate, drawing inspiration from daily life, her family’s menagerie of animals, and the arcadian beauty of the New England countryside surrounding the homestead. Bethany Tudor commented, “One could say my mother’s whole art career has been inspired by her lifestyle, plus the farm pets and animals.”

A Prolific Creator

Tudor’s prodigious output took the form of books, sketches, Christmas cards, and more. She wrote and illustrated over two dozen children’s books, worked as illustrator on over 100, and won multiple awards. Among the children’s classics she illustrated are “Mother Goose,” “Fairy Tales for Hans Christian Andersen,” “The Secret Garden,” and “Little Women.” Many of the books she wrote focused on animals and domestic life. A deep love for family life and a simpler time suffuses her work, inviting readers to appreciate the little things and to take life slowly.

Delicate scenes of children playing in the woods, small animals scampering through fields of flowers, corgis (a favorite animal of Tasha’s) leaping about a farmyard, and families huddled around the hearth or a festive table of Christmas delicacies appear throughout her oeuvre. Indeed, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and other celebrations always cheered her heart. The family celebrated them with great care and fanfare—that love for holidays finds its way into her illustrations.

Stylistically, her aesthetic is simple, elegant, delicate, with soft watercolor hues mixing with raw pencil lines. The flower borders that dance around so many of her images epitomize the simple charm with which she framed not only her art but also her life.

In 1971, after her children were grown, a divorced Tasha Tudor moved to a plot of land in Vermont, where her son Seth built her a house without using any power tools. This house also lacked electricity.

There, Tasha continued her unique rural lifestyle, transferring flocks of geese, cows, ponies, and hens to the new homestead. She continued to draw, paint, and write, publishing her final book, “Corgiville Christmas” in 2003. She passed away in 2008.

Though Tasha’s lifestyle certainly required a lot of work, it bore beautiful fruit. Indeed, perhaps the lack of technological distractions gave Tasha’s creative muse greater freedom This is, perhaps, part of what makes her work unique. There’s an authenticity to her nostalgic and charming pictures that likely derives from her own upbringing and way of life. The old-fashioned world depicted in her artwork reflects what she really witnessed, growing up in the 1910s and 1920s, and the way she continued to live long after the rest of the world modernized.

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Tasha Tudor Classics

1. “Pumpkin Moonshine”
2. “1 is One”
3. “A Time to Keep”
4. “Corgiville Fair”
5. “A Child’s Garden of Verses”
6. “Mother Goose”