Myers Literary Guide:
The North-East
 

WILLIAM STOBBS (1914 - 2005)

Born in South Shields, Stobbs read history at Durham and became head of design at the London College of Printing (1950-58) and later principal of Maidstone College of Art. He was a prolific illustrator and in 1959 won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal for his work on 'Kashtanka' by Anton Chekhov and 'A Bundle of Ballads' by Ruth Manning-Saunders.

Stobbs worked in black-and-white as well as full colour and made particularly effective use of a restricted palette (e.g. red and black printing from half-tone plates), a development perhaps of the 1940s Puffin book tradition of two-colour lithographs. He was responsible for the jacket design of Silver Everything and Many Mansions by Winifred Cawley (q.v.) when it was reissued by Oxford University Press in 1976. This is reproduced in Journey to the Hidden Kingdoms (a guide to North East children's literature) by Jim Mackenzie.

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