SIMMONDS, Posy.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Original mock-up for Fred, together with associated correspondence. The author's early children's book, Fred (1987), tells of the exciting rock-star double life of a family cat. It was adapted into an animated short film in 1996. These preliminary pencil drawings range from hasty sketches of outline shapes to some wonderfully detailed pieces.Posy Simmonds (b. 1945) is an award-winning illustrator, cartoonist and writer of graphic novels and children's books. Her graphic novels Gemma Bovery and Tamara Drewe were originally published as comic strips in the Guardian, and have both been made into feature films.The story is told in comic strip and this mock-up was later extensively revised. The name of the main character was originally "Felix", and the tale commences "Lucy and Tom sit on the steps outside their house..." This would be printed as "Sophie and Nick sit on the step outside their house..."The accompanying autograph letters, postcards and home-made greetings cards are addressed to the artist's publisher Tom Maschler (1933-2020), head of Jonathan Cape. There are references to book revisions and reviews, acknowledgements of floral gifts, problems with seagulls ("we face... the Jackson Pollocks the gulls have done down the windows"), comments on publication results ("some of the colour is a bit gauzy"), gratitude for Maschler's "editing skills... and... patience and help", references to work on Gemma Bovery ("exciting, gripping, difficult"), and observations on book fairs

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