Originally serialized in the Guardian, Posy’s Gemma Bovery builds on the bones of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Tamara Drewe draws from Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, while Cassandra Darke takes inspiration from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. We draw moral lessons from the Ally Sloper cartoons of the 1870s, glimpse Frans Masereel’s wordless woodcut stories of the 1920s, view the pictorial politics of Citizen 13660 by Miné Okubo in the 1940s and revisit Art Spiegelman’s 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus before taking a closer look at more contemporary works.įrom a tragicomic summer with Joff Winterhart, nuclear explosions with Raymond Briggs, the shadow of James Joyce with Mary and Bryan Talbot and an Iranian childhood with Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, the discussion moves through panels, frames, splashes and spreads to Posy Simmonds’s own methods in bringing literature to life, including crosshatching to Vivaldi. Together they bring graphic novels and comic books to the foreground with the Slightly Foxed team. The book will appeal to the many fans of Simmonds's work, and anyone interested in illustration will adore this unrivaled exploration of a sophisticated innovator.The cartoonist, writer and illustrator Posy Simmonds brilliantly captures the ambitions and pretensions of the literary world, and the journalist and curator Paul Gravett has worked in comics publishing for decades. Posy Simmonds is the first title in Thames & Hudson's new The Illustrators series, which celebrates illustration as an art form. The portrait of Simmonds that emerges underlines her role as a keen chronicler and critic of contemporary British society-a storyteller who writes and illustrates with rare perception and humanity.

Paul Gravett has had unprecedented access to her archive and includes pages from her sketchbooks as well as rare or never-before-seen artwork. This generously illustrated book examines Simmonds's life and work from early childhood to the present day, offering insights into her creative process. Illustrator Posy Simmonds is known for her extraordinarily precise drawings, keen powers of observation, and sharp but well-tempered wit, all of which have made her an internationally renowned artist. A nicely designed, compact career overview with 115 color illustrations.Īn inaugural volume in a new series showcasing the most significant illustrators of the modern era, this book explores the satirical cartoons of Posy Simmonds.

Posy Simmonds by Paul Gravett