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Charles Mozley was born in Sheffield and worked largely as a commercial artist after graduating from the Royal Collage of Art in 1937. He is renowned as a prolific book cover artist and illustrator. His most notable works were created between the 1950s and 1970s and included posters for the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, film posters, including Alexander Korda's 1947 version of 'An Ideal Husband', murals for the Festival of Britain in 1951, press advertising for companies such as Shell and British European Airways (BEA), besides a host of book cover designs and illustrations for British and American publishers.
After his graduation in 1937, Mozley taught life drawing, anatomy and lithography for a short period at the Camberwell School of Art (1938-1939). At the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the army, where he undertook work with camouflage. In the Summer of 1940 Mozley independently submitted work to the Kenneth Clark's official war art scheme, the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC). One work was accepted, a watercolour, 'A Kentish Lane, 1940' (Art.IWM ART LD 321), and later assigned to IWM. A second work, 'D-20', an oil, was acquired in 1944 and eventually placed with the Government Art Collection. Mozley also applied for a drawing permit in wartime, whether this was granted is unclear, but it possibly allowed him to create 'Spam Sandwich, Waterloo Street Buffet' along with nine other drawings detailing Home Front scenes in London and Plymouth. Mozley may have intended to submitt these again to the WAAC, they were eventually donated to IWM by the artist in 1985.
After the Second World War Mozley went on to design numerous book jacket designs for the publishers Chatto and Windus, including titles by Iris Murdoch, Dan Jacobson and Mauirice Edelman. Between 1962 and 1971 he also illustrated books for the Limited Editions Club of New York, including George Bernard Shaw's 'Man and Superman', H G Wells's 'The Invisible Man' and John Galsworthy's 'The Man of Property'. However, a commission by The Bodley Head in 1960 to illustrate James Joyce's 'Ulysses' was abandoned. The small number unpublished illustrations Mozley completed have convinced many scholars that had the commission been fulfilled it would have resulted in Mozley's finest illustrative work. Another ambitious project in 1980 to illustrate Chaucer's 'Caterbury Tales' was also left incomplete, but not before Mozley had created several fine characterisations of some of the Tales' figures.