Dealing with May Gibbs wasn’t all Snugglepot and Cuddlepie

For Bib and Bub, it all began 100 years ago.

May Gibb’s first newspaper strip appeared in Sydney’s Sunday News on August 3, 1924, and she was paid £5 for the weekly half-page strip. From little acorns, oak trees grow, and Gibbs produced one Bib and Bub comic strip every week for the next 43 years. It was syndicated around Australia and New Zealand.

Curator Sarah Morley with May Gibbs’ original illustrations at the Mitchell Library.Credit: Louise Kennerley

An exhibition of the illustrator’s early work has opened at the State Library of NSW, which holds many of her early papers and letters relating to her contracts with newspaper publishers. They reveal that, as a businesswoman in the male-dominated world of newspapers, she was perfectly capable of standing her ground when things didn’t go her way.

Bib and Bub followed on from her success with the “wee gumnut babies” Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, which were published as booklets and then in hardback in 1918.

But to generate more income, Gibbs created another character called Tiggy Touchwood about a pipe-smoking pig who was a bit rough around the edges but who used magical powers for good not evil.

August 3 marks the 100th anniversary of the first Bib and Bub strip.Credit: Illustration by May Gibbs, © The Northcott Society and Cerebral Palsy Alliance

Gibbs’ original publisher didn’t want two strips by the same illustrator, so she took it to the rival Sunday Sun. The Sunday News was not impressed, but they allowed her to publish it under the pseudonym Sam Cottman.

Senior curator Sarah Morley said there were occasions when Gibbs took a stand when her illustrations weren’t given the display or prominence she thought they deserved. Gibbs once pulled Bib and Bub from the newspaper altogether in protest when the strip diminished in size.

“She was a household name already from her Snugglepot and Cuddlepie booklets,” Morley said. “The minute they hit the breakfast table they were popular.

May Gibbs.Credit: Fairfax Photo Library

“Gibbs had a head for business and was quite formidable. Just about every publisher she worked with, in the early days at least, preferred not to deal with her directly. There are letters where she slams an editor about the quality of the print. She kicked her agent into touch when she heard Tiggy Touchwood had been syndicated to New Zealand without her knowledge. She was ropeable.

“I don’t want to paint her as a difficult woman because I don’t think she was. Today, she would be considered an astute businesswoman, but she was so protective of her intellectual property and she was the first female artist to get a long-term comic strip contract, and she fought for that.”

Gibbs produced the two weekly comics concurrently from 1925 to 1931. Tiggy Touchwood ended when the newspapers merged.

At the age of 91, Gibbs produced her final Bib and Bub, published on September 10, 1967.

Tiggy Touchwood, drawn by May Gibbs.Credit: Illustration by May Gibbs, © The Northcott Society and Cerebral Palsy Alliance

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