Helen E. Hokinson

She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts (now known as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago), and worked as a freelance fashion illustrator in Chicago for department stores such as Marshall Field's.

[1] She specialized in wealthy, plump, and ditsy society women and their foibles, referring to them as 'My Best Girls', those dowager denizens of woman's clubs, beauty parlors, art galleries, summer resorts and Lane Bryant; they were also popularly known as “Hokinson Women”.

[1] According to James Thurber and Brendan Gill, Hokinson relied on the magazine's staff writers to provide captions for her cartoons, a common practice at The New Yorker in the Harold Ross era, until entering into a professional partnership with James Reid Parker in 1931.

Hokinson died in the Eastern Airlines Flight 537 mid-air collision at Washington National Airport on November 1, 1949, en route to an appearance at the opening of a Community Chest Drive in DC.

[3][1] She left dozens of cartoons, many of which were published by The New Yorker in subsequent months.