Raymond Briggs's Personal Library Goes on Sale in Charity Shop

More than 1,000 books from the personal library of illustrator and author Raymond Briggs have gone on sale at Oxfam's bookshop in Hove.

Donated by Briggs's estate following his death in 2022, the collection by the creator of Father Christmas, The Snowman, and Fungus the Bogeyman spans illustration, cartoons, comics and social history, with works by Aubrey Beardsley, E. H. Shepard, Charles Schulz, Edward Gorey, and Posy Simmonds, plus around 30 comic annuals from the 1950s.

The collection also includes a signed first edition of Graham Rawle's Woman's World and titles on nuclear disarmament that echo Briggs's When the Wind Blows, while Britain's Wartime Milkmen nods to Briggs' father Ernest, whose life inspired Ethel & Ernest.

“What's fascinating is the range," said Martin Hill, a volunteer at Oxfam's Hove bookshop who has been working on the collection. "You begin to see connections between the books Raymond Briggs created and the books and artists he chose to have around him. 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 Raymond Briggs's work.

"This collection offers a wonderful glimpse of the visual and intellectual world of one of Britain's most distinctive illustrators – and we’re delighted that the books are going back into readers' hands and raising money for Oxfam.”

Hundreds of titles are now in Oxfam's Hove bookshop, with more added to the online shop as cataloguing continues.

Briggs lived locally for more than 50 years and taught illustration at Brighton School of Art from the early 1960s to 1986. The landscape behind the flight scene in The Snowman was inspired by the Downs behind his home, and Brighton's Royal Pavilion features in the story.