A posy of life

A delightful book to kick off the Thames & Hudson new series devoted to famous illustrators. Author Paul Gravett writes a warm hearted overview of this well known illustrator and cartoonist. Posy Simmonds seemed destined for some sort of creative career judging by the pictures in the book from her teens, page twenty has a very credible spread for a women's magazine called 'Herself' which she did aged fourteen. A few pages on and there's an art school pen and ink drawing of a torso that clearly shows a professional approach.
Her first published work, when she was twenty-one, was a book jacket for publisher Anthony Blond, a very simple graphic black and white design, then advice from cartoonist Mel Calman helped to start her career, The Times, in 1968, commissioned illustrations for some feature pages. Simmonds first book came out in 1969 and Sun editor Larry Lamb saw a copy and asked her to do a regular feature called 'Bear by Posy', which ran to over1500 cartoons by 1975. Now an established illustrator/cartoonist with work appearing in Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, The Sunday Times, Woman's Own and especially The Guardian where she contributed work for several years. 　

I can remember enjoying her very funny satirical strip 'Literary life' about the publishing biz from 2004 to 2006 in The Guardian. This was very typical of Simmonds work, well thought out characters, frequently with improbable names, that get involved in the social faux pas of life. This theme runs through her adult books like Tamara Drewe, Gemma Bovery and Cassandra Darke.

The book, with 115 illustrations in mono and colour, is an excellent sampling of Simmonds creativity, lots of strips (with readable text) roughs showing how characters are developed visually and here and there some work that shows just how professional she is. Page fifty-four has a remarkably precise pencil rough of a bird's eye view of some houses and gardens, on the opposite page is the beautifully finished coloured painting as it appeared in her 'Fred' book from 1987.

A very enjoyable book for anyone who wants to study the creative work of one our leading illustrators.