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I first met with Freeman's illustrations in Robert Martin's popular Joey
series of books published in the 1950s by Nelson. Joey and his gang lives in the middle of London, and most of their adventures happened around there. Freeman's illustrations caught the atmosphere of growing up in a big city, as can be seen from the dustwrapper of the first book. Occasional adventures took place away from London, the one illustrated on the right in marshland not unlike the Romney Marshes. |
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His first work connected with Malcolm Saville was in 1959 when he produced
an attractive dustwrapper for the otherwise unillustrated Mystery Mine.
For the next Lone Pine book, Sea Witch Comes Home,
he painted the portraits of David and Rose
onto a photograph of Walberswick taken by the author. In 1963 Newnes reissued The Gay Dolphin Adventure with a new dustwrapper illustration by Freeman. It was a version of the first one by Bertram Prance, and Freeman added his own touch to Prance's spine illustration, this time of Jon and Penny examining the old map. |
| The following year Newnes published Treasure at Amorys (Newnes 1964) for which he provided chapter head illustrations as well as the dustwrapper. |
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Freeman took over from E H Shepard the illustration of
the Susan and Bill
series for the final two books: Susan, Bill and the
Bright Star Circus (Nelson 1960) and Susan, Bill
and the Pirates Bold (Nelson 1961).
For each of these he provided a full colour frontispiece as well as black
and white text illustrations and dustwrapper.
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As a change from the above, I thought I'd end with something different.
The illustration alongside is one of many from the book
The Cream of Alpines by the horticulturalist Frank Barker
published in 1958 by Nelson. |
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