Posy Simmonds

Posy Simmonds, born Rosemary Elizabeth Simmonds on 9 August 1945 in England, is a British cartoonist, writer, and illustrator known for her long-running work with *The Guardian*. Her career spans children's books, newspaper strips, and graphic novels, with her most celebrated works being *Gemma Bovery* (2000) and *Tamara Drewe* (2005–06), both serialized in the paper before being collected as books. Simmonds’s style gently satirizes the English middle classes, especially those with literary pretensions, often weaving in allusions to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century gothic romantic novels while giving them a modern, ironic twist. Her graphic novels frequently feature a "doomed heroine" navigating contemporary life. In our catalog, she is credited as artist, colorist, inker, letterer, and writer on 21 issues between 1987 and 2019, with key titles including *Tamara Drewe*, *Gemma Bovery*, *Cassandra Darke*, *Fred*, and *Die Katze des Bäckers*. Simmonds was appointed MBE and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her later work continues to explore themes of class and literary ambition, cementing her legacy as a sharp observer of British social mores.