Jill Barklem

Jill Barklem (1951-2017) was an English children's author and illustrator, creator of the Brambly Hedge books about a community of mice living in a hedgerow. She was born Gillian Gaze in Epping, Essex, on 23 May 1951 and died of pneumonia on 15 November 2017.

She was educated at Loughton High School and then studied illustration at St Martin's in London. Before Brambly Hedge she illustrated children's Bibles, prayer books and the Haffertee Hamster stories under her maiden name. The first four Brambly Hedge books, Spring Story, Summer Story, Autumn Story and Winter Story, were published together in 1980, one for each season, with her detailed watercolour illustrations. Four longer stories followed: The Secret Staircase (1983), The High Hills (1986), Sea Story (1990) and Poppy's Babies (1994). The series sold more than seven million copies and was translated into more than 13 languages. Its characters appeared on Royal Doulton china and other merchandise from the 1980s, and in the stop-motion television series The Enchanted World of Brambly Hedge, which began on BBC One on Christmas Day 1996. She married the antiques dealer David Barklem in 1977.

For collectors

The four seasonal books of 1980 are the cornerstones of a Brambly Hedge collection. Open Library records 1980 editions of Spring Story from both Collins in the UK and Philomel Books in the US, and the four were first issued as separate volumes in a small format. The later omnibus The Four Seasons of Brambly Hedge (Collins, 1988) gathers the first four stories in one volume.