POSY SIMMONDS ILLUSTRATORS HC

In the course of a career spanning more than fifty years, Posy Simmonds has become one of Britain s best-known satirical cartoonists. She is also as a much-loved author and artist of widely translated children s books and graphic novels. These include Fred, animated in 1996 into the Oscar-nominated short film Famous Fred, and Gemma Bovery and Tamara Drewe, both adapted into films, increasing her international fame. Simmonds once described her job on a census form as a visual engineer . Her extraordinary precision of drawing, her powers of observation and her sharp but welltempered wit have made her one the Britain s most sophisticated innovators, renowned especially for expanding the scope and subtlety of comics. This is the first book to explore Simmonds s life and work from her early childhood to the present day. In a series of interviews with Paul Gravett she offered insights into her creative process and provided unprecedented access to her workroom and archives containing sketchbooks and rare or never-before-seen artworks. A portrait emerges of Posy Simmonds as a chronicler and critic of contemporary British society and a storyteller in words and pictures of rare perception and humanity.