Everything about Posy Simmonds totally explained
Rosemary Elizabeth "Posy" Simmonds MBE (born
9 August 1945) is a
British newspaper cartoonist and
writer and
illustrator of
children's books. She is best known for her long association with
The Guardian, for which she's drawn the cartoons
Gemma Bovery (2000) and
Tamara Drewe (2005-2006), both later published as books. Her style gently satirises the
English middle classes and in particular those of a literary bent. Both of the published books feature a "doomed heroine", much in the style of the 18th and 19th Century gothic romantic novel, to which they often allude, but with an ironic, modernist slant.
Biography
Posy Simmonds was born in
Berkshire and educated at Queen Anne's School,
Caversham. She studied at the
Sorbonne before returing to
London to attend the
Central School of Art & Design. She started her newspaper career drawing a strip for
The Sun in 1969 before joining
The Guardian as an illustrator in 1972.
In 1979 she started drawing a weekly comic strip for
The Guardian, initially titled
The Silent Three of St. Botolph's as a tribute to the 1950s strip
The Silent Three by
Evelyn Flinders. The strip focused on three 1950s schoolfriends in their later, middle-class and nearly middle-aged lives: Wendy Weber, a former nurse married to
polytechnic sociology lecturer George with a large brood of children; Jo Heep, married to whisky salesman Edmund with two rebellious teenagers; and Trish Wright, married to philandering advertising executive Stanhope with a young baby. The strip, which was latterly untitled and usually known just as "Posy", ran until the late 1980s. It was collected into a number of books:
Mrs Weber's Diary,
Pick of Posy,
Very Posy and
Pure Posy, and one original cartoon book featuring the same characters,
True Love. Her later cartoons for
The Guardian and
The Spectator were collected as
Mustn't Grumble in 1992.
In 1980 and 1981, Simmonds was named Cartoonist of the Year.
In 1987 Simmonds turned her hand to writing, as well as illustrating, children's books.
Fred, the story of a cat with a secret life, was later filmed as
Famous Fred and nominated for the
Academy Award for Animated Short Film and several
BAFTAs. Her other children's books include
Lulu and the Flying Babies,
The Chocolate Wedding and
Lavender.
In the late 1990s Posy returned to the pages of
The Guardian with Gemma Bovery, which reworked the story of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary into a satirical tale of English expatriates in France. It was published as a graphic novel in 1999. Literary Life appeared in The Guardian's "Review" section on Saturdays from November 2002 until December 2004. One collected edition of
Literary Life cartoons has been published.
Posy's most recent
Guardian series, Tamara Drewe, made its début in the Review section on 17 September 2005, in the first Saturday paper after the Guardian's relaunch in the Berliner format. It ended, with episode 109 and an epilogue, on
2 December 2006 and was published as a book in 2007.
She drew the illustrations for the opening titles of the
BBC's 2007 production of
Elizabeth Gaskell's
Cranford.
She was made a Member of the British Empire in 2002 for her services to the newspaper industry.
Selected bibliography
- Mrs Weber's Diary (1979)
- True Love (1981)
- Pick Of Posy (1982)
- Very Posy (1985)
- Pure Posy (1987)
- Mustn't Grumble (1993)
- Gemma Bovery (1999)
- Literary Life (2003)
- Tamara Drewe (2007)
Children's books
Bouncing Buffalo (1984)
Fred (1987)
Lulu And The Flying Babies (1988)
The Chocolate Wedding (1990)
Matilda: Who Told Lies and Was Burned To Death (1991)
F-Freezing ABC (1996)
Cautionary Tales And Other Verses (1997)
Mr Frost (2001, in Little Litt #2)
Lavender (2003)
Baker Cat (2004)
Footnotes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Posy Simmonds'.
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