Margery Jean Gill
, 1925 - 2008
British illustrator of children’s books, particularly editions of children’s classics published in the 1960s and 70s, Margery Jean Gill was born in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland, but grew up in Hatch End in London. She loved to draw from an early age, and aged 14 left grammar school to attend the Harrow School of Art. She continued her study of etching and engraving at the Royal College of Art. She illustrated her first children’s book, an Oxford University Press edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, the same year she married actor Paddy Jordan. Further commissions for OUP preceded long associations with Puffin and Bodley Head, for which she illustrated more than thirty books between the late 1950s and the early 1980s. She began working in colour in the early 1960s. Her depiction of child characters was recognised for conveying the complexity of their emotions – not all positive - as well as their physicality. Her style fell out of fashion in the 1980s, and she published her last work, Ann Thwaite’s Pennies for the Dog, in 1985.
Sources:
Illustrator whose bold style reflected modern attitudes to children, theguardian.com (accessed: September 15, 2020).
Matthew Weaver, Margery Gill: A life in pictures, theguardian.com, published December 11, 2008 (accessed: September 15, 2020).
Terry Potter, Margery Gill, letterpressproject.co.uk, published August 24, 2017 (accessed : September 15, 2020).
Bio prepared by Miriam Riverlea, University of New England, mriverlea@gmail.com
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