Helen Haywood (1907 - 1995) was an English artist and writer noted for children's book illustrations and her interest in natural history and anthropology.  

"Went to S. America as a child, where father, Arthur Haywood, was building the first trans Andean railway ... Lived in a small village in the Chilean Andes & began painting and writing at the age of six, being fascinated by the animals & birds of most remote part of the world.... Returned to England at 16 & published first book, "The Mouse That Ran" (F. Warne). Won a scholarship to Landsdowne (sic) College of Art. Worked for Maurice Inmans of New York & Robert Riviere & Son Bookbinders of Heddon St. London."  

"Miss Haywood was a keen student of science and an amateur naturalist and anthropologist. Many of the books she illustrated for the publisher Hutchinson & Co., London, were keenly observed and scrupulously accurate depictions of plants, birds and animals. When commissioned to do illustrations for a children's book on dinosaurs, her research into the skin colors she subsequently chose for her dinosaur illustrations was cited by the Royal Academy of Sciences

In the 1950s through 1960s Haywood illustrated over a hundred books, published by Thomas Nelson Ltd., and created a series of books based on the character Peter Tiggywig. She produced double fore-edge paintings on commission every year from the 1930s to the 1970s for Inman's Books, an antiquarian book dealer in New York City.

She died in Bournemouth in 1995.