clear his debts, and a cloud seemed to lift. He wrote: "But what peace of mind when, standing in the wooden hut to which I had moved, I could look about me and see not one thing that was worth five shillings to anyone else!" In 1934 he completed the two books that he considered to be his best, Beasts and Saints by Helen Waddell and Glory of Life by Llewelyn Powys. Glory of Life was produced by Gibbings, but published by the new owners of the Golden Cockerel Press. This was the beginning of a sustained period as an author illustrator. In 1935 he produced A True Tale of Love in Tonga, another picture book along the lines of The Seventh Man, followed in 1936 by Coconut Island, a book for children. Both of these were based on his experiences in the South Seas, and were followed by John Graham, Convict (1937), a version of a true account set in Australia. His reputation was growing and he was commissioned by Penguin Books to write a travel book. He went to Bermuda and the Red Sea, and wrote and illustrated Blue Angels and Whales (1938). This was the first original writing commissioned by Penguin. The book led to Gibbings's appointment as art director of a new series of Penguin Illustrated Classics. The first ten titles, launched in May 1938, were illustrated by Gibbings (he illustrated Herman Melville's Typee) and other wood engravers. The series was not a success and was discontinued after the issue of the first ten titles. Penguin did, however, publish Coconut Island in 1945 as a Puffin Story Book, as well as his wood engravings to books by Eleanor Doorly – The Insect Man (1942), The Microbe Man (1943) and The Radium Woman (1953). As well as writing his own books, he continued to produce wood engravings for other commissions, such as George Scott-Moncrieff's A Book of Uncommon Prayer (1937) for Methuen, where each short poem such as "The Cormorant" faced one of his images. The cormorant prays "Give me the green wave force, / Show me where / The sweetest fishes swim". He continued to illustrate books for the Golden Cockerel Press and other publishers, designed a greetings telegram for the GPO, became involved with the Sun Bathing review and produced adverts for Shell Oil. There were two major changes in his life. He had numbers