became her business representative. Thereafter, Little Lulu was widely merchandised, and was the first mascot for Kleenex tissues; from 1952 to 1965 the character appeared in an elaborate animated billboard in Times Square in New York City designed by Artkraft Strauss. The character appeared in comic books, animated cartoons, greeting cards and more. Little Lulu comic books, popular internationally, were translated into Arabic, Dutch, Finnish, French, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Greek. Buell stopped drawing Little Lulu in 1947, and the work was continued by others, while she kept creative control. Sketching and writing of the Little Lulu comic book series was taken on by John Stanley, who later drew Nancy and Sluggo. Buell sold her Little Lulu rights to Western Publishing when she retired in 1971. Personal life On 30 January 1935, she married Clarence Addison Buell who had a career in the Bell Telephone Company. The two reached a compromise in their career ambitions, in that the husband agreed to turn down promotions that would result in relocation, and the wife would keep her creation enough in check that she would be available for her children. The couple had two sons: Larry, born in 1939; and Fred, born in 1942. She shied from the spotlight, rarely giving interviews or allowing publication of photos of herself. She also shied away from politics, and resisted requests from her sons to include progressive elements such as a black playmate for Lulu or overtly feminist themes. Her son Larry stating in 2007 that "she didn't think of Lulu as a part of politics. She drew a line between entertainment and didacticism." After the sale of the Lulu copyrights in 1971, the Buell couple retired to Ohio, where their son Larry resided. Buell died on May 30, 1993, of lymphoma in Elyria, Ohio. Buell's son Larry is a professor of American Literature at Harvard, and her son Fred is a professor of English at Queens College. Legacy In July 2006, Buell's family donated the "Marge Papers" to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University. The papers include a collection of fan mail, comic books, scrapbooks of high points in Lulu's history and a complete set of the newspaper cartoons. In 2005, Heritage Auctions sold the original art to the first Little Lulu panel for $9,200. In recent years, Buell's original art from Little Lulu panels regularly bring between $2,000-$3,000 at auction. References Sources