Best known as an illustrator of satirical covers and cartoons for the "New Yorker" magazine, she was known for her themes of the bemused older woman who found herself out-of-step with the times.

She was raised in a comfortable middle class environment in Mendota, Illinois. In high school, she did numerous caricatures of classmates and teachers and then attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts where she studied cartooning and illustrating for five years.

She also worked as a fashion-design sketcher and then moved to New York City where she did freelance fashion illustrating. But her interests turned to social issues including the circumstances of laboring people, and in 1925, she sent sketches to "New Yorker" editor Harold Ro...