Edward Osmond

Edward Osmond was born on 6 May 1900 in Orford, Suffolk, the son of the Rev. Percy Herbert Osmond (a clergyman with the Church of England) and his wife, Agnes Paulina (née Sadler), and grew up in Surrey where his father was appointed to the vicarage of Ewshot, near Farnham, in 1906.

Osmond was educated privately and, from 1917, studied at Regent Street Polytechnic, earning his Art Teacher's Diploma and a Diploma in Art History in 1924. He taught part-time at Hastings College of Technology, Sussex, and at Hornsey College of Art whilst exhibiting his work, primarily painting in oils and illustrations in wash and line.

Osmond was married to Constance M. Biggs, a sculpter who also exhibited at the Royal Academy, in 1927 and turned freelance in 1928, contributing illustrations to Hutchinson' Pie and to books, including a Reader's Library edition of Black Beauty (1932).

He began writing and illustrating his own books in the early 1950s, the first of which, A Valley Grows Up, was published by the Oxford University Press in 1953. It went on to win the Carnegie Medal for the year's most outstanding children's book in 1954. That same year, Osmond began writing and illustrating the Animals of the World series for Oxford University Press (1954-57) which were widely praised for their depth and detail. Osmond subsequently wrote and illustrated a wide variety of books, including From Drumbeat to Tickertape (1960), a study of communication, The Artist in Britain, from the eighth to the twentieth century (1961), and Exploring Fashions and Fabrics (1967). He continued to produce popular books on animals and the peoples of other lands as well as illustrating The Thames Flows Down (1957), written by his wife under the pen-name Laurie Osmond.

Osmond was a member of the Society of Industrial Artists and the Society of Authors. His death was registered in Lewes, E. Sussex, in 1981. 

(* Osmond was also an illustrator for Treasure magazine. The above illustration is from issue 17 and is © Look and Learn Magazine Ltd.