George Worsley Adamson (7 February 1913 – 5 March 2005) was a book illustrator, writer, and cartoonist, who held American and British dual citizenship from 1931.See The London Gazette, 6 November 1931, p. 7149.
Early life Adamson was born in the Bronx, New York City. His parents were George William Adamson, a master car builder for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, and Mary Lydia (Lily, née Howard). His father, born in Glasgow, Scotland, and his mother, born in Wigan, Lancashire, had moved to New York City from Bombay in 1910.
Following the death of his mother in February 1921, George Adamson sailed to England with his father, his Aunt Florence, and his two sisters, Marie and Dorothy, on the Cunard liner RMS Caronia, landing at Liverpool on July 10.Board of Trade passenger list, inwards, Liverpool, July 1921 pt 2, RMS Caronia, pp. 12 and 14, BT26/693, The National Archives, Kew. His father sailed back to New York in October 1921, where he died the following year.
George Adamson was educated at the Wigan Mining and Technical CollegeNow part of Wigan and Leigh College. and the Liverpool City School of Art,Later the Liverpool College of Art. where he studied etching and engraving under Geoffrey Wedgwood RE.
He exhibited at the Royal Academy (in 1937, 1939, 1940 and 1948) and contributed to Punch from 1939 to 1988.
World War II
During World War II, Adamson served with the RAF Coastal Command as a navigator in Catalina flying boats on the Western Approaches and trained on B-24 Liberators in the Bahamas. After he illustrated a feature on transatlantic flights for the Illustrated London News, he was appointed an official war artist for the Coastal Command. Some of Adamson's drawings are now in the Imperial War Museum and the RAF Museum.
Career Between 1946 and 1953 Adamson taught engraving and illustration at Exeter School of Art, Exeter, Devon.
In 1954 he worked briefly in London with the designer John Morgan for the newly formed design group Byrne and Woudhuysen Limited (later Woudhuysen & Company Ltd), before setting himself up as a full-time illustrator and cartoonist.
Illustrator The first book for which he did the drawings and dust-wrapper was Marjorie Vasey's The Day is Over (Epworth Press, 1954).
From the mid-1960s he illustrated Norman Hunter's Professor Branestawm books, providing a suitably zany continuity with W. Heath Robinson's illustrations from the 1930s. Also in the 1960s, Adamson painted the jackets for Alan Garner's first two novels for children: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) and The Moon of Gomrath (1963). In the same decade Adamson did the drawings for the first book of poems Ted Hughes wrote for children: Meet My Folks! (1961); this was followed by the drawings he did for Ted Hughes's first book of children's stories, How the Whale Became (1963), and those for the first edition of The Iron Man (1968).
In 1970, Adamson illustrated the book based on Richard Carpenter's television series Catweazle; this was followed in 1971 by the drawings he did for the book based on the second series, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac. In the 1980s, he illustrated the first five of the Richard Ingrams and John Wells Dear Bill books for Private Eye.
Besides work for books, Adamson undertook commissions to illustrate articles in periodicals, among them the Listener and Nursing Times. For the latter he drew more than two hundred illustrations between 1963 and 1983.
Cartoonist Adamson published his first cartoon in Punch in September 1939 and his last in the Spectator in September 1994. Over the intervening fifty-five years his cartoons appeared not just in Punch but in the Tatler and Bystander, Time & Tide, the Peterborough column in the Daily Telegraph, Private Eye and other magazines.
Engraver and etcher At Liverpool City School of Art, Adamson developed what became a lifelong fascination with fine printing, especially dry-point, soft-ground etching and aquatint. In the early years after World War II he undertook several etchings for his own delight while teaching at Exeter School of Art.See etchings on George Adamson's official website.
Between his portrait of his two-year-old son Peter One Morning (completed in 1950) and Killerton from the North (1979), however, there was a gap of many years during which he pursued his career as illustrator and cartoonist. He went back to printmaking with great enthusiasm in the late 1970s, exhibiting his works both new and old at the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers.Adamson, George (contributor) (1984). Among his later prints are portraits of John Ogdon (1979) and Patricia Beer (1982).
Work in public collections George Adamson's work is held in several public collections, including the following:
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (etching on loan from the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers) British Museum, London House of Humor and Satire, Gabrovo, Bulgaria Imperial War Museum, London New York Public Library, New York Oxford Brookes University Library, Oxford (drawing in André Deutsch Collection) Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter Ulster Museum, Belfast Victoria and Albert Museum, London Wigan Heritage Service, Wigan
Selected works Books written and illustrated A Finding Alphabet (Faber & Faber, 1965) Finding 1 to 10 (Faber & Faber, 1967) Rome Done Lightly (Chatto & Windus, 1972)
Books illustrated This includes work as interior and cover illustrator. Marjorie Vasey The Day is Over (Epworth Press, 1954) Donald Herbert Barber Family Affairs (Epworth Press, 1954) Bertita Leonarz de Harding Magic Fire: The Story of Wagner's Life and Music (Harrap, 1954) Barbara Ireson (ed.) Nursery Nonsense (Faber & Faber, 1956) Hans Habe [János Békessy], transl.from the German by Ewald Osers Off Limits: a novel of occupied Germany (Harrap, 1956) James Baggaley Shadow of the Eagle (Harrap, 1956) Ronald Ridout Word Perfect (Ginn, 1957–1960) Gladys Staines (ed.) Twelve Little Plays (Ginn, 1957) Charles Kingsley (ed. M. W. & G. Thomas) Westward Ho! (Ginn, 1957) Vera Caspary The Husband (W.H. Allen, 1957) James Baggaley The Spare Men (Harrap, 1958) Barbara Ireson (ed.) The Faber Book of Nursery Verse (Faber & Faber, 1958) "Mr George Adamson am y darluniau" Second Stages in Welsh, summer term 1959 (BBC Broadcasts to Schools, 1959) W. H. Wood Crown of Gold (Thomas Nelson, 1959) W. H. Wood Perils of Pacifico (Brockhampton Press, 1959) Frank Yerby The Serpent and the Staff (Heinemann, 1959) Compton Mackenzie Hunting the Fairies (Penguin, 1959) Compton Mackenzie Monarch of the Glen (Penguin, 1959) Compton Mackenzie The Rival Monster (Penguin, 1959) Compton Mackenzie Water on the Brain (Penguin, 1959) Compton Mackenzie Thin Ice (Penguin, 1959) A. Elliott Cannon Silver City (Wheaton, 1959) A. Elliott Cannon A Question of Identity (Wheaton, 1959) Druce Raven Let's Go Camping! (Nelson, 1959) William Appleby Singing Together (BBC Schools, 1960) Willis Hall The Royal Astrologer: adventures of Father Mole-Cricket of the Malayan legends (Heinemann, 1959) W. H. Wood Perils of Pacifico (Franklin Watts, New York, 1960) Alan Garner The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Collins, 1960) John Sibly You'll Walk to Mandalay (Jonathan Cape, 1960) Austin Stevens On the Market (Jonathan Cape, 1960) Austin Lee Miss Hogg and the Covent Garden Murders (Jonathan Cape, 1960) David Scott Daniell The Golden Pomegranate (University of London Press, 1960) Kenneth Lillington Conjuror's Alibi (Thomas Nelson, 1960) Barbara Ireson (ed.) Barnes Book of Nursery Verse (A.S. Barnes, 1960) Andrew Sinclair The Breaking of Bumbo (Penguin, 1961) Jacynth Hope-Simpson The Bishop of Kenelminster (Putnam, 1961) Austin Stevens The Moon Turns Green (Jonathan Cape, 1961) Roy Herbert Rufus Tractor (Brockhampton Press, 1961) Roy Herbert Rufus Tractor (Bobbs Merrill, 1961) Ted Hughes Meet My Folks! (Faber & Faber, 1961) G. P. W. Earle Foundations of English (Ginn, 1961) Jacynth Hope-Simpson The Bishop's Picture (Putnam, 1962) Irene Byers Silka the Seal (Brockhampton Press, 1962) Piet Niemand Jan Domm: a romp (Geoffrey Bles, 1962) Clarence Jonk Yami and his Unicycle (Faber & Faber, 1962) Barbara Ireson (ed.) Verse that is fun (Faber & Faber, 1962) Willis Hall The Royal Astrologer: adventures of Father Mole-Cricket of the Malayan legends (Coward, McCann, 1962) Elsie Hall Grassam, C.C. Falconer et al. Old Lob Readers (Ginn, 1962–5) L. H. Evers Danny's Wonderful Uncle (Thomas Nelson, 1963) Alan Garner The Moon of Gomrath (Collins, 1963) Alan Garner The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Puffin, 1963) Ted Hughes How the Whale Became (Faber & Faber, 1963) Kenneth Methold Vital English (University of London Press, 1963) Roy Herbert Rufus rolls on (Brockhampton Press, 1964) C. P. Watson (ed.) Fabulae Aesopi: a Latin reader for beginners (Faber & Faber, 1965) Margaret Lovett Sir Halmanac and the Crimson Star (Faber & Faber, 1965) Boswell Taylor The Running Dog (University of London Press, 1965) Margery Fisher (ed.) Open the Door: an anthology of stories (University of London Press, 1965) Alan Garner The Moon of Gomrath (Puffin, 1965?) Hughes (poems) and Gordon Crosse (music) Meet my Folks! A theme and relations. For speaker, children's chorus, children's percussion band, and adult percussion and instrumental players (Opus 10) (Oxford University Press, 1965) George Adamson Widdecombe Fair (Faber & Faber, 1966) T. H. White The Sword in the Stone (Collins, 1966) Norman Hunter Professor Branestawm's Treasure Hunt (Bodley Head, 1966) Norman Hunter Professor Branestawm's Treasure Hunt (Puffin, 1966) Ted Hughes The Iron Man: A story in five nights (Faber & Faber, 1968) Alison Farthing The Queen's Flowerpot (Oliver & Boyd, 1968) Mary Cockett Tufty (Macmillan, 1968). In the Nippers series. Geraldine Kaye Bonfire Night (Macmillan, 1968). In the Nippers series. Pandora Pollen Henry and Henrietta (Chatto, Boyd and Oliver, 1969) George Barker Runes and Rhymes, Tunes and Chimes (Faber & Faber, 1969) Kaye Webb & Joan Aitken The Friday Miracle & Other Stories (Puffin 1969, contrib.) M. C. V. Jeffreys World To-day: You and Other People (Ginn, 1969) Charles Geoffrey Stuttard World To-day: Problems at Work (Ginn, 1969) Norman Hunter The Peculiar Triumph of Professor Branestawm (Bodley Head, 1970) Norman Hunter The Peculiar Triumph of Professor Branestawm (Puffin Books, 1970) J. L. Carr The Red Windcheater (Macmillan, 1970). In the Nippers series. Richard Carpenter Catweazle (Methuen, cloth; Puffin, paperback, 1970) George Barker To Aylsham Fair (Faber & Faber, 1970) Norman Hunter Professor Branestawm's Treasure Hunt (Bodley Head, 1970) Margaret Stuart Barry Boffy and the Teacher-eater (Harrap, 1971) Richard Parker Me and My Boots (Macmillan, 1971). In the Nippers series. Ted Hughes The Iron Man: A story in five nights (Faber & Faber, paperback, 1971) Richard Carpenter Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac (Methuen, cloth; Puffin, paperback, 1971) Elwyn Thomas Ashton World To-day: People and Leisure (Ginn, 1971) Ted Hughes How the Whale Became (Puffin, 1971) Norman Hunter Professor Branestawm up the Pole (Bodley Head, 1972) Norman Hunter The Peculiar Triumph of Professor Branestawm (Puffin, 1972) Trevor Griffiths Tip's Lot (Macmillan, 1972). In the Nippers series. Geoffrey Jackson The Oven-Bird and Some Others (Faber & Faber, 1972) Mary Cockett An Armful of Sparrows (Macmillan, 1973). In the Nippers series. Norman Hunter Professor Branestawm's Dictionary (Puffin, 1974) Peter Dickinson Emma Tupper's Diary (Puffin, 1973) William Mayne A Game of Dark (Puffin, 1973/4) Boswell Taylor The Door that Would Not Open (University of London Press, 1974) Margaret Stuart Barry Boffy and the Mumford Ghosts (Harrap, 1974) Roger Lancelyn-Green (ed.) Strange Adventures in Time (J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd & E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1974)