Raymond Briggs' personal library goes on sale at Oxfam in Hove

Donated by Briggs' estate following his death in 2022, the collection spans illustration, cartoons, comics and social history, with works by Aubrey Beardsley, E. H. Shepard, Charles Schulz, Edward Gorey and Posy Simmonds among the shelves.

Around 30 comic annuals from the 1950s offer a glimpse into the visual world that shaped Briggs' style, while other titles give insights into the interests, influences and ideas that shaped one of Britain's best-loved illustrators, with every purchase helping to raise vital funds for Oxfam's work tackling poverty and inequality around the world.

Briggs lived beneath the South Downs for more than 50 years and taught illustration at Brighton School of Art from the early 1960s to 1986. The landscape behind the flight scene in The Snowman was inspired by the Downs behind his home, and Brighton's Royal Pavilion features in the story.

The collection also includes a signed first edition of Graham Rawle's Woman's World, historic comic annuals, and titles on nuclear disarmament that echo When the Wind Blows. One book, Britain's Wartime Milkmen, nods to Briggs' father Ernest, whose life inspired Ethel & Ernest.

Martin Hill, a volunteer at Oxfam's Hove bookshop who has been working on the collection, said: “What's fascinating is the range. You begin to see connections between the books Raymond Briggs created and the books and artists he chose to have around him.

“There are great illustrators and cartoonists, but then you find books about ageing, bathrooms, domestic life, old annuals and wartime milkmen. It is serious, funny, ordinary and sometimes rather dark – which feels very familiar to anyone who knows Raymond Briggs's work."

Hundreds of titles are now in Oxfam's Hove bookshop, with more added to the online shop as cataloguing continues.