Posy Simmonds

Posy Simmonds is a British cartoonist and illustrator best known for newspaper strips and graphic novels that satirize middle-class life and literary culture. Her notable works include 'Gemma Bovery,' which reworks themes from Gustave Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary' in a modern context. She famously serialized many of these stories in The Guardian.

Yes, Posy Simmonds has received numerous accolades for her work, including the prestigious Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. She was also appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to literature. Her graphic novel 'Tamara Drewe' won the Prix des Critiques.

Gemma Bovery was directly inspired by Gustave Flaubert's 19th-century French masterpiece, Madame Bovary. Simmonds cleverly transplanted the themes of romantic disillusionment and bourgeois boredom into a contemporary story about English expatriates living in France. The graphic novel uses sophisticated visual pacing to parallel the original novel's tragedy.

Posy Simmonds gained broad public recognition through her long-running comic strips published in the British newspaper The Guardian. Her daily cartoon 'The Silent Three of St Botolph's' began in the 1970s and ran for many years. These serialized strips were later compiled into successful collected graphic novels.