Cooper said of her work on Dawn of Fear, 'She caught the image of the kids I was writing about perfectly, with no communication. She worked for numerous other publishers, including Jonathan Cape, for whom she illustrated Susan Cooper's Over Sea, Under Stone in 1965, and Chatto & Windus, for whom she illustrated Cooper's Dawn of Fear in 1972, drawing on her own memories of living in London during the Second World War. Įleanor Graham, the founding editor of Puffin Books, also sought her out to illustrate books including a 1961 edition of A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. She remarked 'that is often how children are - taking their own lives seriously'.

John Ryder, the publisher's design and art director, said her early work was 'interfered with, rather than aided' by her background in etching and engraving, but as her drawings became bolder her work became more in demand, her serious, unsentimental view of childhood suiting the kitchen sink realism prevalent in children's books at the time. Īfter a series of commissions for the Oxford University Press, Gill began an association with The Bodley Head, for whom she illustrated over thirty books between 19, including Margaret Kornitzer’s 1960 novel about adoption, Mr Fairweather and his Family, and books by Anita Hewett, Roger Lancelyn Green and others.

In 1946 she began studying etching and engraving at the Royal College of Art, married actor Patrick Jordan, and illustrated her first book, Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, for the Oxford University Press. She left school at 14 and took a place at Harrow School of Art. Margery Jean Gill was born in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland, on 5 April 1925, and brought up in Hatch End, London after her father Oscar moved there to take a job at the Post Office Research Station developing the speaking clock.

Dream Gold by David Severn