Geoffrey Raynor Hook b. 1928

Also known as Jeff, Jeff Hook, Geoffrey Hook, Geoff Hook
  • Artist (Painter),
  • Artist (Cartoonist / Illustrator)
Late 20th century Hobart and Melbourne newspaper cartoonist, illustrator and children's book author. He writes with his right hand and draws with his left.
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cartoonist and illustrator, was born in Hobart in December 1928, educated at St Virgil’s College and later obtained a Diploma in Commercial Art from Hobart Technical College. After several years in the Tasmanian Public Service he was employed on the Hobart Mercury as a press artist in 1951. He remained there for 13 years until moving to the Melbourne Herald-Sun as political cartoonist in 1964, where he drew an average of three cartoons a day. He had to produce a daily publishable one for it as well as provide others for the Sun News-Pictorial and the Sporting Globe (1976: ill. Lindesay 1979, 320). A cartoon of the early 1970s dealing with the Six-Day War, Three Wiser Men , was used by the London Times . By 1978 he had written and illustrated a children’s book, Jamie The Jumbo Jet , and illustrated three others, including Osmar White’s The Super-Roo of Mungalongaloo (Puffin Books, Harmondsworth, 1978, 1st pub. Wren Publishing 1973), which parodies the intrepid explorer myth. Other books he illustrated include The Footballer Who Laughed (Hutchison Aust, pre-1982).

Hook writes with his right hand and draws with his left. He signs his cartoons 'Jeff’ and most include a small hook (initially suggested by Bill Green i.e. 'WEG’). He and journalist Keith Dunstan often worked together overseas and in Australia on features for the Sun in the 1960s-70s. Last of the Boat People , published in the Sunday Herald Sun on 29 June 1997, and A Wik is a long time in politics! (27 April 1997) were exhibited in Bringing the House Down: 12 Months of Australian Political Humour (Canberra: National Museum of Australia/ Old Parliament House exhibition, 1997), cats 60, 86. He also had cartoons in Bringing the House Down 2001 (and presumably in the intervening ones): NMA website.

He retired in 1993 and is now a freelance cartoonist and illustrator. His work appears regularly in the Herald Sun and Sunday Herald Sun . Married to Pauline, they have five children. They live in the Melbourne suburb of Burwood.

Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007

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References [<ExternalResource: Hook, Jeff, '[Sun cartoon anthologies]'.>, <ExternalResource: Hook, Jeff, 'Jamie the Jumbo Jet'.>, <ExternalResource: Dunstan, Keith (1990), 'No Brains at All : An Autobiography', Ringwood Vic : Penguin.>, <ExternalResource: Hook, Jeff (1978), 'The Hook Book No 1', Melbourne, Vic : Herald & Weekly Times.>, <ExternalResource: Hook, Jeff (c.1979), 'The Hook Book No 2', Melbourne, Vic : Herald & Weekly Times.>, <ExternalResource: Hook, Jeff (1992), 'Boom, Bust & Polka Dots', Melbourne, Vic : Schwartz & Wilkinson (Mitchell Library Q741.5994/99).>, <ExternalResource: Stone, Walter (1973), '50 years of the newspaper cartoon in Australia', Adelaide, SA : The News, Adelaide in association with the Art Gallery of South Australia, p 78.>, <ExternalResource: (1986), 'Australian Black-and-White Artists Club Book of Originals', Sydney, NSW : Australian Black-and-White Artists Club / Art Gallery of New South Wales, (178.1988.1-102).>, <ExternalResource: (12 November 1985), 'Australia's magnificent cartoonists', Sydney, NSW : in Bulletin, p 108.>, <ExternalResource: Turner, Ann (2000), 'In their image : Contemporary Australian cartoonists [Oral History interviews]', Canberra, ACT : National Library of Australia.>, <ExternalResource: Information sourced from Baxter, Andrew.>, <ExternalResource: Lindesay, Vane (1979), 'The inked-in image : a social and historical survey of Australian comic art', Richmond, Vic : Hutchinson of Australia (new edition).>, <ExternalResource: (2001), '[National Museum of Australia website]', Canberra, ACT : National Museum of Australia.>] [<ExternalResource: Hook, Jeff, '[Sun cartoon anthologies]'.>, <ExternalResource: Hook, Jeff, 'Jamie the Jumbo Jet'.>]