Robert Gibbings

Lecturing at Reading University

Gibbings had lost his livelihood and his family, though not his home. He did not sell the grounds and buildings of the press, as the new owners moved the press to London. To save money he moved out of the cottage into one of the huts in the grounds, and his son Patrick, who was at St Piran's Independent School in Maidenhead, stayed in another one when he was at home at the weekend. He did not seem deeply distressed about the loss of his family, although he did build up a close relationship with Patrick. The money from the sale of the press was enough to clear his debts, and a cloud seemed to lift. He wrote: "But what peace of mind when standing in the wooden hut to which I had moved, I could look about me and see not one thing that was worth five shillings to anyone else!"

In 1934 he completed the two books that he considered to be his best, Beasts and Saints by Helen Waddell and Glory of Life by Llewelyn Powys. Glory of Life was produced by Gibbings, but published by the new owners of the Golden Cockerel Press.

This was the beginning of a sustained period as an author illustrator. In 1935 he produced A True Tale of Love in Tonga, another picture book along the lines of The Seventh Man, followed in 1936 by Coconut Island, a book for children. Both of these were based on his experiences in the South Seas, and were followed by John Graham, Convict (1937), a version of a true account set in Australia.

His reputation was growing and he was commissioned by Penguin Books to write a travel book. He went to Bermuda and the Red Sea, and wrote and illustrated Blue Angels and Whales (1938). This was the first original writing commissioned by Penguin. The book led to Gibbings's appointment as art director of a new series of Penguin Illustrated Classics. The first ten titles, launched in May 1938, were illustrated by Gibbings (he illustrated Herman Melville's Typee) and other wood engravers. The series was not a success and was discontinued after the issue of the first ten titles. Penguin did, however, publish Coconut Island in 1945 as a Puffin Story Book, as well as his wood engravings to books by Eleanor Doorly – The Insect Man (1942), The Microbe Man (1943) and The Radium Woman (1953).

As well as writing his own books, he continued to produce wood engravings for other commissions, such as George Scott-Moncrieff's A Book of Uncommon Prayer (1937) for Methuen, where each short poem such as "The Cormorant" faced one of his images. The cormorant prays "Give me the green wave force, / Show me where / The sweetest fishes swim". He continued to illustrate books for the Golden Cockerel Press and other publishers, designed a greetings telegram for the GPO, became involved with the Sun Bathing review and produced adverts for Shell Oil.

There were two major changes in his life. He had numbers of visitors from Reading University, one of whom was Elisabeth Empson. Early in 1934 she discovered that she was pregnant. This came as something of a shock to her parents. There was a twenty-year age difference between her and Gibbings, and he was unable to marry her as he was still married to Moira. The couple moved down to Cornwall, where their daughter Vahine was born in November 1934 – they had two more children, another daughter Tiare (1937) and Shaun (1946). Elisabeth's parents came to accept the relationship, and gave the couple the money to build a cottage in the grounds at Waltham Saint Lawrence in 1935. Elisabeth and Gibbings were married in 1937 after Moira finally agreed to a divorce. The relationship was always strained, for much the same reasons that Gibbings's relationship with Moira was strained. He went off, for example, on two trips to Bermuda and the Red Sea, leaving Elisabeth with two young children to look after.

A more positive change in his life was his appointment in 1936 as sessional lecturer in typography, book production and illustration at Reading University for one day a week. He was a very good teacher, and encouraged his students by producing a number of books illustrated with their wood engravings, including Fatherless Oberlus (1936), Loftur (1939) and The Diary of W. Lashly (1939), the diary of William Lashly, a survivor of Captain Scott's expedition to the South Pole.