More than 1,000 books from the personal library of Raymond Briggs, the beloved British author and cartoonist best known for The Snowman and Fungus the Bogeyman, have gone on sale at Oxfam's Hove bookshop in East Sussex and online. The collection was donated by Briggs's estate after his death in 2022 at the age of 88.
Range of books reflects Briggs's interests
Briggs's library spans comics, illustration, novels and social history, including works by Peanuts creator Charles Schulz and Winnie-the-Pooh illustrator E.H. Shepard. A signed first edition of Graham Rawle's Woman's World, a 2005 book composed of fragments from women's magazines, is also included. Other illustrators featured are Shirley Hughes, Aubrey Beardsley, Edward Gorey and Posy Simmonds. About 30 comic annuals from the 1950s offer 'a glimpse into the visual world that shaped Briggs's style,' according to Oxfam.
Volunteer highlights connections
Martin Hill, a volunteer at Oxfam Hove bookshop, said: 'What's fascinating is the range. You begin to see connections between the books Briggs created and the books and artists he chose to have around him.' He added: 'There are great illustrators and cartoonists, but then you find books about ageing, bathrooms, domestic life, old annuals and wartime milkmen. It is serious, funny, ordinary and sometimes rather dark – which feels very familiar to anyone who knows Briggs's work.'
Notable items in the collection
The collection includes pamphlets on nuclear disarmament, a subject explored in Briggs's 1982 graphic novel When the Wind Blows. A 1974 book by Monty Python's Terry Jones and Michael Palin, Bert Fegg's Nasty Book for Boys and Girls, is also listed, along with a set of John Constable's reproduced sketches and a first edition copy of Riddley Walker, the post-apocalyptic novel by Russell Hoban.
Briggs's life and legacy
Born in Wimbledon in 1934, Briggs spent more than 50 years living beneath the South Downs near Hove. The area inspired his 1978 picture book The Snowman, which features Brighton's Royal Pavilion. He taught illustration at Brighton School of Art from the early 1960s to 1986. Briggs became known for picture books that subverted conventions of children's storytelling, such as Fungus the Bogeyman (1977) and Father Christmas (1973), which imagines a cantankerous Santa Claus. In a 2019 interview with the Guardian, Briggs said: 'I liked to find fantastical creatures and treat them realistically. I don't see any difference between doing children's and adult books. My attitude is exactly the same. I just do the book as I want it to be.'
The animated adaptation of The Snowman first aired in 1982 and has been broadcast almost every Christmas since. After Briggs's death, children's author Michael Rosen said: 'We have been lucky to have read and watched such great work from a great artist with a great heart.'
Pricing and availability
The Oxfam collection 'offers a wonderful glimpse of the visual and intellectual world of one of Britain's most distinctive illustrators,' said Hill. Prices for the books on the online store range from £5.99 to £400 for the first edition of Rawle's Woman's World.
