Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, John R. Neill did his first illustration work for the Philadelphia's Central High School newspaper in 1894-95. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and produced advertising art for the Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia. He became a staff artist of the Philadelphia North American newspaper, for which he produced features like "Life Among the Macaronis" and the Sunday page "The Little Journeys of Nip and Tuck," which had verses by W. R. Bradford (1909–10). Neill's newspaper series "Children's Stories That Never Grow Old" was re-issued in book form by Reilly & Britton starting in 1908, and remained in print into the 1920s. In 1906 he illustrated the serialization of Baum's The Fate of a Crown.