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Posy SimmondsPosy Simmonds
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Critical perspective
BiographyPosy Simmonds was born in 1945 and grew up in Berkshire. She studied Graphic Design at the Central School of Art in London. In 1969, she started her first daily cartoon feature 'Bear' in The Sun, and also contributed to a variety of magazines and journals, including The Times and Cosmopolitan.
She is renowned for her light, witty satire, and social observation. In 1972, she moved to The Guardian as illustrator, where she created a popular cartoon strip about middle-class couple, George and Wendy Weber. During this time she also produced graphic novels, including True Love (1981), and Gemma Bovery (1999), an adult reworking of Flaubert's Madame Bovary. She was named 'Cartoonist of the Year' in 1980 and 1981.
In 1987, she began to write and illustrate children's books, and created Lulu and the Flying Babies (1988) and the very popular Fred (1987), the film version of which was nominated for an Oscar.
Her most recent books are Baker Cat (2004), for children, and Literary Life (2003). Tamara Drewe, a book inspired by Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd, was published in 2007.
Posy Simmonds lives in London.
Genres (in alphabetical order)Children, Graphic Novels, Illustration
BibliographyThe Posy Simmonds Bear Book (author/illustrator) Berkeley, 1969 More Bear (author/illustrator) Mayflower, 1975 Rabbiting On and Other Poems (illustrator) Fontana, 1978 Mrs Weber's Diary (author/illustrator) Cape, 1979 The Captain Hook Affair (illustrator) Allen & Unwin, 1979 Hot Dog and Other Poems (illustrator) Kestrel, 1981 True Love (author/illustrator) Cape, 1981 Pick of Posy (author/illustrator) Cape, 1982 The Young Visiters (illustrator) Chatto & Windus, 1984 Very Posy (author/illustrator) Cape, 1985 A Concise History of the Sex Manual 1886-1986 (illustrator) Faber and Faber, 1986 Cat Among the Pigeons (illustrator) Viking, 1987 Fred (author/illustrator) Cape, 1987 Pure Posy (author/illustrator) Cape, 1987 Lulu and the Flying Babies (author/illustrator) Cape, 1988 Lulu and the Chocolate Wedding (author/illustrator) Cape, 1990 Matilda Who Told Lies, and was Burned to Death (illustrator) Cape, 1991 Mustn't Grumble (author/illustrator) Cape, 1993 Bouncing Buffalo (author/illustrator) Cape, 1994 Great Snakes! (illustrator) Viking, 1994 F-freezing ABC (author/illustrator) Cape, 1995 Cautionary Tales and Other Verses (illustrator) Folio Society, 1997 Gemma Bovery (author/illustrator) Cape, 1999 The Folio Book of Humorous Verse (illustrator) Folio Society, 2002 Lavender (author/illustrator) Cape, 2003 Literary Life (author/illustrator) Cape, 2003 Baker Cat (author/illustrator) Cape, 2004 The Gibbon's in Decline, But the Horse is Stable (with Maureen Lipman and Jan Pienkowski) Robson Books, 2006 Tamara Drewe (author/illustrator) Cape, 2007
Prizes and awards1998 National Art Library Illustration Award Cautionary Tales and Other Verses
Critical PerspectiveLike the heroine of her most celebrated work, Gemma Bovery (1999), the art of Posy Simmonds is seductive; as well as always being funny, well-observed, and deliciously satirical. The cover of Literary Life (2003), her latest collection of cartoons and strips, shows a middle-aged man smiling with intent towards a young waitress. Looking inside, we find the caption (‘You know, you’re really beautiful … Have you ever thought of being a novelist?’), and then see its context, a launch party for a new book, Love Rats. Relations between the sexes are but one subject among many for Simmonds, with her characteristic rich vein of fantasy, her cute ear for the varieties of middle- class chatter, and eye for socially revealing details. She has been a favourite commentator on the pretensions and foibles of the English during the past 35 years as a prolific newspaper cartoonist, illustrator, graphic novelist and children’s author. She is indeed the most literary of cartoonists, and Literary Life specifically concerns the manifold tribulations of the world of books. Women writers suffer ‘Rustic Block’ after moving to the countryside; type their sexual fantasies into their laptop, and (in ‘Enemies of Promise’) juggle the dilemmas of feminism and motherhood. Male authors are shown suffering the ego-perils of coming into contact with the public at book signings, and complain about reviewers and ‘media hoops’. Jealousies and rivalries emerge out of reading groups; struggling small booksellers have to deal with recalcitrant customers or sales reps pushing the latest celebrity book. Simmonds’ penchant for literary pastiche and parody is given full rein, as in ‘Murder at Matebele Mansions’. And she wickedly suggests a family’s fixed smiles as a young girl explains the plot of her Harry Potter book …
What makes Posy Simmonds’ work so appealing? Hers is partly a humour of recognition, capturing social gaffes and embarrassments, typical behaviour amid the absurdities of daily life – and its occasional soaring fantasies. She can portray a range of reactions and facial expressions, being particularly good with eyes; a particular slant or cast can convey anger, jealousy, slyness, sycophancy, daydreaming or lust. The often risqué and even erotic elements in Simmonds’ work stretch back to the late 1960s with ‘Bear’, her daily feature in The Sun newspaper (the first of her many anthropomorphic animals). She began to develop a more sophisticated style by switching to the broadsheet spaces of The Guardian where her work appeared every Monday from 1977 to 1987 (and irregularly until the present day). She delighted readers by poking fun at their own liberal values, especially during the Thatcher era. Mrs Weber’s Diary (1979) collected these strips, featuring much put-upon polytechnic lecturer George Weber and his wife Wendy, whose earnest efforts to live ethically are continually undermined by their children, neighbours, students, and colleagues.
True Love (1981) was her first graphic novel, but her masterpiece in the form is undoubtedly Gemma Bovery. This tour de force of satire and eros is also a multi-layered tale full of humour and pathos, playfully invoking Flaubert’s classic novel of adulterous love. Its cover sets the tone, showing a wistful-looking Gemma, with unnaturally huge eyes, wearing her coat above an alluring red bra – and carrying a hot water bottle. Most of the action takes place in the Normandy village of Bailleville, with the tragic-comic story being told in flashback by the local baker Joubert, who like Gemma and her dull husband, has quit the big city for a supposed rural idyll. Raymond Joubert is the anti-hero, a jealous voyeur who first notices, then sets out to wreck, Gemma’s affair with young student Herve - and who has stolen her diaries. Alongside the love affair and its aftermath goes a delicious portrayal of differing cultural nuances among the French and British. Among its satirical targets are the attitudes of second-home owners in rural France (as represented by the Boverys’ awful neighbours ‘Wizzy’ Rankin and her city broker husband), and their preoccupations with sex, money and status. There’s also a good deal of fun at the expense of British appreciation of French language, food and wine; the aperitifs at the Boverys’ dinner party, for instance, are Pimms and pork scratchings (‘C’est quoi Monsieur Porky?’). In Simmonds’ work, fantasy is a ruling preoccupation: Gemma’s dream of a new life in France as a successful interior designer, complete with love child and entwined national flags, is beautifully drawn – but never realised.
‘Facts and Fallacies no.6: Children’s Picture Books’ (in Literary Life) sardonically points out that ‘Illustrating isn’t really work – cosy hours at home with paints and crayons and Radio 4’. Simmonds’ books for children abound in recognizable behaviour – kids sulking, throwing tantrums, giggling, over-eating and being naughty or sick. Their extra dimensions (short and sweet as they are) include a lavish use of colours, and even more extravagant intrusions of fantasy into daily suburban lives. They are markedly less satirical than her adult books, and family life is seen as warm, even idyllic. Only in Bouncing Buffalo (1994) is there a hint of trouble, as two youngsters antagonize a bad-tempered restauranteur, and their parents’ failing antique shop is threatened with closure. Simmonds works on the Alice in Wonderland principle, by which small children fall asleep and enter a topsy-turvy dream world of talking clothed animals. The brother and sister in Fred (1987), for example, sorrowing after the death of their much loved lazy moggy, are woken up by next door’s cat - wearing mourning dress - and they join the neighbourhood’s wake for ‘Famous Fred’, discovering his secret past as a nocturnal pop singer, and coming to terms with his passing. Simmonds’ invocation of Lewis Carroll is made even more explicit in Lulu and the Chocolate Wedding, when a little girl, sick from over-eating, is woken by the bridegroom from her aunt’s wedding cake. Lulu shrinks after licking the sugar bride’s shoe (‘I’ve GONE ALL WEENY!’), and they set off to rescue her from the stinky hideout of some gangster mice, with the aid of her Easter chocolate coins, soldiers and kittens.
One of her latest children’s book is a little different: the cover of Lavender (2003) shows two foxes in countryside gear leering at a picture of ‘the bravest rabbit in the world’. This has a softer-edged style, rendered in pastels and crayons, though it is also a satirical updating of Beatrix Potter, with families of middle-class rabbits and working-class foxes that are entirely human-like. The bespectacled heroine, timidly bookish Lavender, doesn’t trust foxes, but becomes tempted into visiting a foxes’ wedding marquee. There are many funny details: the foxes, fat from eating restaurant pizzas, push their picnic in a supermarket trolley, wear baseball caps and carry a ghetto blaster. They are naïve ‘townies’ - ‘Ooh!’, says one, ‘You must be a cow!’ Posy Simmonds has endeared herself to generations of Guardian readers – and their children.
Dr Jules Smith, 2004
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