Phyllis Pearsall

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Phyllis Pearsall, MBE (1906–1996) was a distinguished painter and writer, and the creator of the A to Z map of London.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early years

She was born Phyllis Isobella Gross in East Dulwich, London on 25 September 1906. Her father, Alexander Gross, was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant and her mother was an Irish Italian Roman Catholic suffragette, whose parents disapproved of the match[citation needed]. Phyllis Gross was baptized a Roman Catholic.

She grew up with her older brother, Anthony Gross, CBE, RA, in London but found herself travelling all over Europe from an early age. Her father founded a cartographic company which, although successful, eventually went bankrupt for lack of careful management.

Her parents had a very tense marriage which soon dissolved. Her mother re-married but died some years later in an asylum.

Phyllis Gross was educated at the Roedean School, a private boarding school near Brighton, which she had to leave when her father went bankrupt. She then became an English tutor in a small school in Fécamp Brittany. Later, she studied at the Sorbonne, spending her first few months in Paris sleeping rough before moving to a bedsit (small studio) where she met writer Vladimir Nabokov. She started working as a shop assistant in a big department store, selling gloves.

She married Richard Pearsall, an artist friend of her brother, at the age of 16. They were together for eight years, travelling in Spain and living in Paris, when she left him in Venice while he was asleep, without telling him anything. She did not remarry.

[edit] The Start of Mapping

By 1935, she had become a portrait painter. While on her way to a party, she tried to follow the best available map of the time (a 1919 Ordnance Survey map). She discovered that this map was not up to the task, and ended up getting lost on her way there. Following a conversation during this party, she conceived the idea of mapping London.

The next day, she started mapping London. This involved walking the 3000 miles of the 23000 streets of London, waking up at 5am everyday, and not going to bed until after an 18-hour working day.

Throughout the walking, she was also drawing up the first A to Z map. Phyllis did all of the proofreading and design work herself, and drew up the map with the help of a single draughtsman. Close to publication, they founded the Geographer's Map Company, to publish under.

In 1936, a year after the project begin, 10,000 copies of the first A to Z were printed. Initially, it proved hard to sell. Finally, WH Smith agreed to take 250 copies of her oeuvre, which she delivered in a wheelbarrow. It was a runaway success.

During the Second World War, while selling maps to the public was forbidden, she worked for the Ministry of Information drawing women in factories. There was also limited production of maps of the War Fronts, but this was a hard time for her fledgling company.

In 1945, she was involved in a plane crash which left her with life-long scars.

[edit] Later Years

In 1966, she turned her company, the Geographers' A-Z Map Co, into a trust to ensure that it was never bought out. This secured the future of her company and its employees. Through her donation of her shares to the trust, she was able to enshrine her desired standards and behaviours for the company into its statutes.

A respected typographer, although not credited with the design of any typefaces, her arrangement of type is considered one of the most interesting of her age. The 'A to Z' typestyle is a classic piece of typography by Eric Gill. She designed the type for a few children's encyclopedias and some other titles, though her slant was always toward publishing.

She wrote about her early days in From Bedsitter to Household Name, published by her own company. She was awarded an MBE, and in 2005 Southwark Council placed a blue plaque in the house where she was born in Dulwich. She was involved with the company she founded, as well as painting prolifically, up until her death.

In her later years she lived in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex and died of cancer on 28 August 1996, a month before her 90th birthday.

[edit] External links

[edit] Sources

  • A. to Z. Maps: The Personal Story - From Bedsitter to Household Name, Phyllis Pearsall, Geographers' A-Z Map Co Ltd, 1990, ISBN 0-85039-243-8
  • Mrs P's Journey: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Created the A-Z Map, Sarah Hartley, Pocket Books, 2002, ISBN 0-7434-0876-4