Mother of the Gumnuts

by Maureen Walsh

Published 1 August 1994
This biography gives a picture of the life of May Gibbs, from whose imagination emerged the mythology and the magic of the gumnut babies Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. It traces her life, from her birth into the comfortable British middle class, through her family's struggles as farmers in the harsh Australian Outback, to a cultured adolescence in Perth, art schools in England and, ultimately, success and its demands. Maureen Walsh lets May speak for herself with snatches of interviews, notes from sketchbooks, letters and autobiographical jottings, all of which reveal the hopes, ideas, concerns and the impish wit of this artist and author.