Biography
McKee was born in Devon, England. After attending the local grammar school he studied at Plymouth College of Art. While still at college, he started selling one-off cartoons, particularly to the national press. On leaving college he continued this in order to support himself while painting, drawing regularly for, among others, Punch, Reader’s Digest, and The Times Educational Supplement.
The first book that he sold was of a story he had told at college, Two Can Toucan. It is about a South American bird who can carry two cans of paint on its enormous bill. This was published by Abelard-Schuman in 1964; a 1985 edition with new illustrations by McKee was re-issued in 2001 by Andersen Press.
Read more about this topic: David McKee
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)