Posy Simmonds

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Posy Simmonds (2009)

Rosemary Elizabeth "Posy" Simmonds (born August 9, 1945 in Cookham , Berkshire ) is a British cartoonist , illustrator , writer, author of graphic novels and children's books. She became known for her work in the Guardian newspaper , for which she a. a. the series Gemma Bovary , Tamara Drewe and Cassandra Darke drew, which also appeared in book form. Gemma Bovary and Tamara Drewe were also filmed. Your comicsand graphic novels show a multi-layered picture of British society, with the English middle-class , in particular typical representatives of the cultural scene, usually taking center stage.

Life

Rosy Simmonds' parents ran a dairy farm where she grew up with their three brothers and a sister. As a child she was influenced by the magazine Punch , which her parents subscribed to and collected, and the cartoons of George du Maurier , "Fougasse" (Cyril Kenneth Bird), "Pont" (Graham Laidler), "Anton" (Antonia Yeoman) and Ronald Searle . She read US comics such as Superman , Batman , Mickey Mouse , booklets from the EC Comics publishing house , horror and murder stories.

She began drawing as a child and was later tutored by a local artist who had previously exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts . At the age of 11, Simmonds was sent to a private girls' boarding school - Queen Anne's School in Caversham, a suburb of Reading .

After finishing school, she went to Paris and studied art at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris (ENSBA Paris). The country girl absorbed French culture and returned to rural Berkshire changed. Simmonds then studied graphic design at the Central School of Art in London. There she met the professor Richard Hollis, whom she married in 1974.

After completing her studies, Simmonds initially worked as a freelancer for several magazines, including The Black Dwarf , The Times , Cosmopolitan and Reader's Digest .

She got her first regular paid job in 1969 with the drawing of a daily cartoons titled Bear for Rupert Murdoch's tabloid The Sun . In 1972 Simmonds began working for The Guardian newspaper , where she initially illustrated articles. In 1977 she was asked by then editor Peter Preston if she would like to draw a comic strip for the women's side. From May 1977 she drew a weekly strip under the title The Silent Three of St. Botolphs . The comic was intended as an homage to the 1950s comic strip The Silent Three of St. Kit’s by Evelyn Flinders (1910–1997) and showed the lives of three middle-aged friends who had known each other since school: Wendy Weber, one former nurse with the faculty of sociology was married George and had a large number of children; Jo Heep, married to whiskey seller Edmund and two rebellious teenagers; and Trish Wright, married to advertiser and philanderer Stanhope and with a young baby. The strip, which was last known simply as Posy , appeared from 1977 to 1987 and comprised a total of 199 drawings. These were later published in book form under the titles Mrs Weber's Diary , Pick of Posy , Very Posy and Pure Posy . In 1981 Simmonds wrote an original book with the same characters under the title True Love .

From 1987 onwards, Posy Simmonds turned increasingly to the writing and illustration of children's books, including Fred , which was later made into a film under the title Famous Fred . Other children's books were Lulu and the Flying Babies , The Chocolate Wedding, and Lavender .

She also continued to draw illustrations for newspapers and returned to the Guardian in 1992 with the weekly comic strip JD Crouch . The strip, which ran for a year, was about the misadventures of a grumpy middle-aged male novelist .

In the late 1990s she drew for the Guardian Gemma Bovery , which Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary turned into a satirical story about English emigrants in France. Gemma Bovery was published in book form in 1999 and filmed in 2014.

From 2002 to 2004 von Simmonds appeared in the Saturday edition of the Guardian Literary Life , in which she mocked all aspects of literary life.

From 2005 to 2006 she drew Tamara Drewe - also for the Guardian . Inspired by Thomas Hardy's novel Far from the Madding Crowd ( Far from the Madding Crowd ) of 1874, lit Simmonds everyday life and the sex lives of British writers . Tamara Drewe was published in book form in 2007 and filmed by Stephen Frears in 2010 under the title Immer Drama um Tamara .

Her graphic novel Cassandra Darke (2018) also appeared as a comic strip in the Guardian before being published in book form. In Cassandra Darke , Simmonds combines a socially critical panorama with psychological portraits of the main characters. The story is also based on Charles Dickens ' story A Christmas Carol , in which Dickens criticized the social grievances of Victorian England .

The trademark of Posy Simmonds is a special text / image composition. Extensive pure text passages are followed by images with and without speech bubbles.

honors and awards

  • 1980 Cartoonist of the Year
  • 1982 Cartoonist of the Year
  • 1998 National Art Library Illustration Award
  • 2002 Member of the British Empire
  • 2009 Prix de la critique at the International Comics Festival in Angoulême for Tamara Drewe

Publications

Graphic novels

  • The Posy Simmonds Bear Book (1969)
  • Bear (1974)
  • More Bear (1975)
  • 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)
  • Cassandra Darke (2018)

Children's books

  • Fred (1987)
  • Lulu and the Flying Babies (1988)
  • The Chocolate Wedding (1990)
  • Matilda: Who Told Lies and Was Burned To Death (1991)
  • Bouncing Buffalo (1994)
  • F-Freezing ABC (1996)
  • Cautionary Tales And Other Verses (1997)
  • Mr Frost (2001)
  • Lavender (2003)
  • Baker Cat (2004)

Web links

Commons : Posy Simmonds  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Posy Simmonds: Essentially English . paulgravett.com
  2. ↑ Posy Simmonds on her graphic novels: “What a treasure!” . The daily newspaper, December 3, 2019
  3. ↑ a b c d A life in drawing: Posy Simmonds . The Guardian, Aug. 28, 2010
  4. ↑ Go London: Posy Simmonds and her illustrations, in pictures . The Standard, May 14, 2019
  5. ↑ The GNM Archive: PSI - Artwork of Posy Simmonds . The Guardian / The Observer, accessed May 17, 2020
  6. ^ A b Posy Simmonds: the invisible woman . The Telegraph, October 21, 2007
  7. ^ The Posy Simmonds collection (PSI) . The Guardian, March 15, 2013
  8. ↑ The GNM Archive: The Silent Three of St Botolph's / The Silent Three. The Guardian / The Observer, accessed May 17, 2020
  9. ↑ Cinema comedy "Always Drama about Tamara" Don't trust your instincts! . Spiegel-Online, December 29, 2010
  10. ↑ “I walk around London a lot and in the past 10 years the difference between rich and poor areas has become more and more obvious ... There are more homeless people, more urban food outlets . At the same time the houses in Knightsbridge, Chelsea and Kensington are worth millions and millions. This divide reminded me of Victorian London and that's how I ended up with Dickens and then with Christmas Carol ... Yeah, it's gotten dark. I started writing before the Brexit referendum and when I started drawing, the gloomy atmosphere in the country must have influenced the colors as well. It's a wintry book, but there are also icy times. (...) It is always nice to invent someone who deviates from the normal. She [Cassandra Darke] is a kind of Ebenezer Scrooge, the main character in Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol. But unlike Scrooge, who is a curmudgeon, Cassandra lives very luxuriously, she is not stingy with champagne. But she is also a cheater and is not interested in pleasing anyone. That's a good thing, because most women should always be very pleasant. ” Inspired by classics:“ Cassandra Darke ”by Posy Simmonds (interview) . WDR Mediathek - WDR 3 Resonanzen, November 19, 2019
  11. ^ British Council - Literature: Posy Simmons
  12. ↑ Simmonds's satirical touch . BBC, June 14, 2002
personal data
SURNAME Simmonds, Posy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Simmonds, Rosemary Elizabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British cartoonist, illustrator and writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Cookham , Berkshire