Georgia Byng

Georgia Byng (born 6 September 1966) is a British children's writer, illustrator, actress and film producer.

Background

Georgia Byng was born on 6 September 1966, in Winchester, England, and raised in the small village of Abbots Worthy in the City of Winchester district of Hampshire. She is the elder daughter and second child of the eighth Earl of Strafford and his first wife, Jennifer May. Through her stepfather, Christopher Bland, Byng is the half-sister of Archie Bland, deputy editor of The Independent, and elder sister of Jamie Byng, publisher of Canongate Books.

Byng was educated at Westonbirt School, an independent boarding school for girls in the Cotswold District, in Gloucestershire. She then attended the Central School of Speech and Drama, a constituent college of the University of London in central London. Following graduation, she went to work as an actress.

Career

Acting and production

Byng worked as an actress from 1989 to 1990, appearing in the television series Screen Two, Dealers, and Capstick's Law. In 2015, she served as producer for the film version of Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism.

Writing and illustration

While pursuing her acting career, Byng began writing comic strips, and illustrating. After her initial success in this field, she gave up acting to write full-time. Her first published book was a comic strip story, The Sock Monsters. Byng's best-known work is Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism, a book about a girl who finds a book about hypnotism and learns how to hypnotise people. In later books, Molly learns to use other powers such as stopping time, travelling through time, reading minds, and morphing into other forms. The sixth book in the Molly Moon series was released in 2012.

Personal life

Byng married Daniel Chadwick in 1990 but divorced in 1995. She has a daughter, Tiger Rose, from this marriage, born in 1991. She has two children with her second husband, artist Marc Quinn called Sky and Lucas.

Publications

Selected works include:

• The Sock Monsters (Orion Publishing Group, 1995)
• Jack's Tree, illustrated by Lucy Su (A & C Black, 2000)
• The Ramsbottom Rumble, illus. Helen Flook (Black, 2001)
• The Girl With No Nose, illus. Gary Blythe (Barrington Stoke, 2016)

Molly Moon series

1. Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism (2004)
2. Molly Moon Stops the World (2004)
3. Molly Moon's Hypnotic Time-Travel Adventure (2005)
4. Molly Moon, Micky Minus and the Mind Machine (2007)
5. Molly Moon and the Morphing Mystery (2010)
6. Molly Moon and the Monster Music (2012)

• Byng, Georgia. "The Girl With No Nose". Barrington Stoke. Retrieved 2017-01-28.