The World of Miss Read
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Sophie Mortimer has long been in demand as an illustrator, with work commissioned for Country Life, The Field,
The World of Interiors and many more. Among her best-loved work is her cover art for the paperback editions of the Miss Read novels, published by Orion Books — the enduringly popular chronicles of English village life written by Dora Saint under the pen name Miss Read. First published in 1955 with Village School, Miss Read's novels went on to sell in their millions, following the fictional villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green through decades of gentle, wry, deeply loved storytelling.
Sophie's covers, still gracing the books in print today, capture exactly the world those novels conjure — hedgerows and village greens, schoolrooms and vicarages, a England quietly disappearing even as it was being written about. This collection brings together Sophie's original artwork from that commission for the first time: the finished covers themselves, alongside the preliminary studies and rough sketches that show how each image came to be. Together they offer both a fresh way to own a piece of a much-loved literary world, and a rare look inside the making of it.
