Raymond Briggs had an estimated net worth of approximately $2 million at the time of death. He made this wealth through his work as a British illustrator, cartoonist, graphic novelist and author.
Briggs pursued cartooning from an early age and, despite the opposition of his father who wanted him to take up a more lucrative profession, he attended the Wimbledon School of Art from 1949 to 1953 to study painting, and the Central School of Art to study typography.
From 1953 to 1955, he was a National Service conscript in the Royal Corps of Signals at Catterick, where he was given a role of a draughtsman.
Following the service, he went to the Slade School of Fine Art, from where he graduated in 1957.
After briefly pursuing painting, he became a professional illustrator and soon began working on children’s books.
Briggs’ first major work was to illustrate an anthology of Cornish fairy tales, Peter and the Piskies, which was published in 1958. They were collected by Ruth Manning-Sanders, who subsequently used Briggs on another of her collections, The Hamish Hamilton Book of Magical Beasts.
His breakthrough came in 1973 with the publication of Father Christmas. Briggs had become frustrated with the traditional children’s storybook format and instead turned it into a strip cartoon, a novel idea for children’s books at the time.
Briggs won his first major award, the Kate Greenaway Medal, in 1966, for his 800 illustrations in The Mother Goose Treasury, a collection of fairy tales and nursery rhymes.
Ethel & Ernest, a 1998 graphic novel based on the lives of his parents, won him the Best Illustrated Book of the Year at the 1999 Book Awards.
Briggs’ work was recognised with the award of an OBE in the 2017 Birthday Honours.
Raymond Briggs died on August 9, 2022, at age 88.