Following her husband's death in 1977, Margret continued writing, and in 1979, became a Professor of Creative Writing at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Margret and her husband moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1963, in a house close to Harvard Square. In later editions, this was corrected, and Margret now receives full credit for her role in developing the stories.

At first, however, Margret's name was left off the cover, ostensibly because there was a glut of women already writing children's fiction. They wrote seven stories in all, with Hans mainly doing the illustrations and Margret working mostly on the stories, though they both admitted to sharing the work and cooperating fully in every stage of development. (A collector's edition with the original watercolors was recently released.)Ĭurious George was an instant success, and the Reys were commissioned to write more adventures of the mischievous monkey and his friend, the Man in the Yellow Hat. Hans and Margret originally planned to use watercolors to illustrate the books, but since they were responsible for the color separation, he changed these to the cartoon-like images that continue to feature in each of the books. The books were published by Houghton Mifflin in 1941, though certain changes had to be introduced because of the technology of the time. From there they returned to Brazil, where they had met five years earlier, but this time they continued to New York, New York. The Reys' odyssey brought them to the Spanish border, where they bought train tickets to Lisbon. Among the meager possessions they brought with them was the illustrated manuscript of Curious George. Hans built two bicycles, and they fled Paris just a few hours before it fell. As Jews, the Reys decided to flee Paris before the Nazis seized the city. Their work was interrupted with the outbreak of World War II. The result, Rafi and the Nine Monkeys, is little remembered today, but one of its characters, an adorably impish monkey named Curious George, was such a success that the couple considered writing a book just about him. While in Paris, Hans's animal drawings came to the attention of French publisher, who commissioned him to write a children's book. They married in 1935 and moved to Paris, France that same year. While there, she met her future husband Hans (who was a salesman and also from Germany). Rey), the co-author and illustrator of children's books, best known for their Curious GeorgeĪlthough she was born in Germany, she fled to Brazil early in her life to escape Nazism. Margret Elizabeth Rey (– December 21, 1996), born Margarete Elisabeth Waldstein, was (with her husband H.

A treasury of curious george