Kathleen Frances Barker

Barker's grandfather, Benjamin Barker, was a weaving overlooker or supervisor. the daughter of Jonas Robinson, a shoemaker. Lydia Robinson was a worsted weaver. who was born in Great Horton, Bradford. Wright Barker left Bradford and worked as an artist in Edwinstowe and Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, then moved to Hampstead. Barker's mother was Ellen Mary Alcock, Her siblings were: Gladys Wright Barker, Doris Wright Barker, PhD, who was a teacher and writer, and Reginald Wright Barker. Barker was a sportswoman, and in her youth her free time was occupied with, "riding, beagling and otter hunting", Her neighbour, who knew her and received gifts of books from her during his childhood, described her as, "a daunting and rather reclusive old lady ... gruff but kind". She was buried at Stonefall Cemetery not far from her parents and alongside her sister Gladys. Personality In her introduction to Just Dogs (1933), Barker speaks her mind about the cross-breed dogs that she has drawn, and about her own attitude to them. At age 32, she is not the retiring and poorly-educated spinster of Victorian popular imagination: I must reluctantly confess ... that the majority of my dog friends portrayed here are, alas, only the ordinary children of ordinary parents; in fact some few among them fail to reach even this standard, but, being the care-free result of some light-hearted and fantastic mésalliance, remain Just Dogs ... It is astonishing the pains we take to defend the points of our dogs, and if, as is sometimes unfortunately the case, the said points are too glaringly non-existent, how easily and gracefully we fall back on some outstanding virtue in the dog's character, or some engaging little way that he has, and dangle this in front of our critics ... [and on imagining dog heaven:] And all the old hounds I think will be young again, rousing the echoes with their wild joyous crash of music as once again they're on the line, hunting the elusive otter to his holt in some dark and secret pool; spreading out over the heather in tireless pursuit of a royal stag, and fleeting over the grass on the scent of a game red fox, who, of course, heaven being heaven, would have no objection to being chased. ==Career==

Between 1933 and 1961 Barker worked as an illustrator, and author of children’s books. Her illustrations, such as Bulldog, the Gamest Fighter of all Time, were reproduced in the Yorkshire Evening Post and The Field Tailwagger. It was not possible for Barker to find commissions during the Second World War, but she started publishing again in the 1950s. ==Reviews==

Just Dogs (1933) and reprints This early book, published at a price of 10s 6d (), drew attention. A Country Life advertisement of 1935 quotes a Glasgow Herald review: "K.F. Barker draws a dog almost as well as Mr Dowd does a child ...". In the Western Mail', the Welsh reviewer Frederick John Mathias, who could at other times be "bruising" and "scarifying" according to Elisabeth Inglis-Jones, discusses Just Dogs in 1933: In 1933, Time and Tide magazine, assuming incorrectly that K.F. Barker is a man, reviews Just Dogs thus: Time and Tide was not the only publication to carry the assumption that K.F. Barker indicated a man. ''John O'London's Weekly'' has this undated review: "Mr K.F. Barker has an uncanny skill in drawing dogs. He can put a dog's whole character into the expression in its eye". Moreover, the dust cover of the 1937 reprint of Just Dogs carries that quotation without demur. The same dust cover carries a second quotation – also undated – from the Times Literary Supplement, and part of the same quote was repeated in a 1935 Country Life advertisement: These delicate pencil drawings, beautifully reproduced, will be a delight to every dog lover; the artist has caught his models on their lawful and unlawful occasions in characteristic attitudes, and has added some obita dicta on dogs and their ways to accompany them by way of text. Of Barker's Himself (1935), the Shrewsbury Chronicle says: The illustrations, from pencil and pen and ink sketches by the author, are charming". Regarding Barker's 1937 book, Just Pups, the Yorkshire Evening Post comments: ==Publications==

Note: this may be an incomplete list. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ==Notes==