Mrs Weber's Omnibus - Tapa dura

"For Christmas I would like Mrs Webers’ Omnibus please." (Nicholas Lezard Guardian)

"Easily the most charming thing in the Guardian ever." (Roland White Sunday Times)

"A satisfyingly fat collection of her old Guardian strips that will make you laugh out loud." (Rachel Cooke Observer)

"Posy Simmonds's Mrs Weber's Omnibus...collects her Guardian strips of the 70s and 80s about a scruffy, well-meaning Guardian-reading family and their friends... Her cosy in-jokes about middle-class silliness and her sharp political fury over sexual inequality and the divide between rich and poor remain remarkably undated." (Justine Jordan Guardian)

"Her dry humour and sharp line are combined with merciless observation on the foibles of the middle-classes...a comic genius who has stood the test of time." (Tatler)

In May 1977 Posy Simmonds, an unknown young illustrator, started drawing a weekly comic strip for the Guardian. It began as a silly parody of girls' adventure stories, making satirical comments about contemporary life. The strip soon focused on three 1950s school friends in their later middle-class and nearly middle-aged lives: Wendy Weber, a former nurse married to polytechnic sociology lecturer George with a large brood of children; Jo Heep, married to whisky salesman Edmund with two rebellious teenagers; and Trish Wright, married to philandering advertising executive Stanhope and with a young baby. The strip, which was latterly untitled and usually known just as 'Posy', ran until the late 1980s.

Collected here for the first time are the complete strips. Although celebrated for pinpointing the concerns of Guardian readers in the 1980s and their constant struggle to remain true to the ideals of the 1960s, they are in fact remarkably undated. They show one of Britain's favourite cartoonists, celebrated for Literary Life and Tamara Drewe, maturing into genius.