Golden Age Postcard Artists

Harry May Hemsley was born in Swindon, England, in 1877, and he grew up to be a man of many talents. He drew cartoons for Britain’s first comic strip magazine featuring a recurring character, Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday, sang in minstrel shows, and toured the Edwardian music hall as a comedian. His speciality was impersonating famous people’s voices. In the 1930s, Hemsley became widely known for his radio show Ovaltiney’s Concert Party, in which he delighted listeners with his impersonation of children’s voices. One nice example of his uncanny talent to sound like a child can be observed and enjoyed here. He also wrote and illustrated a few books based on a character in his show, All About Horace, published by Hutchinson’s in 1938, as well as Horace at the Zoo (1944), Horace at the Farm (1946), and Horace at the B.B.C. (1948), all three published by Raphael Tuck.

That, however, is not all. I also found an undated press notice describing Hemsley as “an accomplished scenic and poster artist”, which makes it somewhat surprising that I haven’t been able to find any record of either. What I have found, though, is about 100 postcards that I am certain are Hemsley’s work. There are some theatre adverts that are signed with his full name, some write-aways signed “Harry H.”, at least four sets of cards signed with a monogram that appears to consist of the letters “HH” and is often thought to be John Hassall’s (which clearly it is not), and many more unsigned cards published by Evelyn Wrench. But strangely enough, I have never seen any but the fully signed ones attributed to Hemsley, which is probably the reason why his postcard output is never mentioned anywhere, not even in publications about British postcard artists.

CHECKLIST of Harry Hemsley’s Postcards