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About Golliwogs

The "Golliwogg" (later "Golliwog", "golly doll") is a character of children's literature created by Florence Kate Upton in the late 19th century, inspired by a blackface minstrel doll which Upton found as a child in her aunt's attic in Hampstead, North London.[citation needed] The character, depicted in the books as a type of rag doll, was reproduced, both by commercial and hobby toy-makers as a children's toy. The toy was known as a "golliwog", and had great popularity in North America, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia, into the 1960s. The doll has very black skin, eyes rimmed in white, clown lips, and frizzy hair, and it has been described as the least known of the major anti-black caricatures in the United States. While home-made golliwogs were sometimes female, the golliwog was generally male. For this reason, in the period following World War II, the golliwog was seen, along with the teddy bear, as a suitable soft toy for a young boy.

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