Glinda cover - Drawing. Public domain image.

John Rea Neill (1877–1943) was a children's book illustrator primarily known for illustrating more than forty stories set in the Land of Oz, including L. Frank Baum's, Ruth Plumly Thompson's, and three of his own. His pen and ink drawings have become identified almost exclusively with the Oz series.

John Rea Neill was a children's book illustrator primarily known for illustrating more than forty stories set in the Land of Oz, including L. Frank Baum's, Ruth Plumly Thompson's, and three of his own. His pen and ink drawings have become identified almost exclusively with the Oz books. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, John R. Neill did his first illustration work for the Philadelphia's Central High School newspaper in 1894-5. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and produced advertising art for the Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia. He became a staff artist of the Philadelphia North American newspaper, for which he produced features like "Life Among the Macaronis" and the Sunday page "The Little Journeys of Nip and Tuck," which had verses by W. R. Bradford (1909-10). Neill's newspaper series "Children's Stories That Never Grow Old" was re-issued in book form by Reilly & Britton starting in 1908, and remained in print into the 1920s. In 1906 he illustrated the serialization of Baum's The Fate of a Crown.