JAMES FRANCIS HORRABIN (1884 - 1962)

The creator of Japhet and Happy characters - Frank Horrabin was a prolific and culturally diverse illustrator. He began as a newspaper strip cartoonist in Sheffield and went to London to work on the News Chronicle, reflecting events on a daily basis, and went on to develop new and exciting cartographic techniques to communicate world events to the public. He illustrated many books and appeared regularly during the early days of television. He also created the Dot and Carrie strip for the Star, an evening newspaper. He was elected Labour Member of Parliament for Peterborough from 1929 - 1931

Although many of his jokes suffer from the driving needs of two daily strips, he had a light and felicitous drawing style with many new ways of telling tales visually. Here is the front of two of his Annuals (undated, c1948 - 1950). His work is also marked by fine consistent colouring and well phrased sentiments. He was also responsible for many excellent guides to Socialism and economics. I attach specimen pages from myown copy of An Atlas of the U.S.S.R, Penguin, Volume 01, 1945 (with James S.Gregory). Compare his layout of statitical information with that of the Isotype Institute .

Horrabin's work should be better known.

 
See also Horrabin's map of the world for The Communist (1920-21, and uncredited in the collection published by James Klugman in 1982).
 
 
Other Horrabin books include The History of the Noah Family (1920); Geography of the War (1940); Land of the Soviets (1946) and