Mrs P’s Journey: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Created the A–Z Map

by Sarah Hartley

Mrs P’s Journey is the enchanting story of Phyllis Pearsall. Born Phyllis Isobella Gross, her lifelong nickname was PIG. The artist daughter of a flamboyant Hungarian Jewish immigrant, and an Irish Italian mother, her bizarre and often traumatic childhood did not restrain her from becoming one of Britain's most intriguing entrepreneurs and self-made millionaires.

After an unsatisfactory marriage, Phyllis, a thirty-year-old divorcee, had to support herself and so became a portrait painter. It is doing this job and trying to find her patron’s houses that Phyllis became increasingly frustrated at the lack of proper maps of London. Instead of just cursing the fact as many fellow Londoners probably did, Phyllis decided to do something about it. Without hesitation she covered London’s 23,000 streets on foot during the course of one year, often leaving her Horseferry Road bedsit at dawn to do so. To publish the map, and in light of its enormous success, she sets up her own company, The Geographer’s Trust, which still publishes the London A-Z and that of every major British city. Mrs P’s Journeyis the account of a strong, independent woman who has left behind an enduring legacy.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, Cartography, Memoir, London

334 pages, Paperback

First published March 4, 2002

Reviews

[Harry Rutherford · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a biography of the woman who [sort of:] single-handedly wrote the A-Z, the most popular London street atlas. Unfortunately it has far too much about her parents and her early life, which was colourful but not particularly remarkable, and far too little about the process of mapping, and what made the A-Z different to other competing London maps.

It’s also extraordinarily badly written; melodramatic and clumsy. It’s hard to do justice to the cumulative effect, but here’s a sample:

“Pacing back and forth in the darkest pit of her memory, Phyllis was aware that she lacked two vital elements of self-esteem that ought to have been rounded up and handed to her by her father. Respect and recognition. No matter how far she needed to search for the errant pair, no matter how long the journey, Phyllis was prepared to hunt them down.”

[Stevie O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book! A captivating true story of the indefatiguable Mrs P, who created the first A-Z map! Her motto to herself was ' on we go,' which she did, I am really surprised that this hasn't been snapped up and made into a film, it's such a good story of determination, resolve and her marvellous courage. Well worth a read!

[Talli Roland · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been awhile since I've read any non-fiction and as an avid user of London's A-Z, I thoroughly enjoyed this. What an amazing life Mrs P lived! My only small quibble is that I didn't always know where fact left off and fiction began.

[JimZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arghhh! Only 23 people reviewed this book. Quite an extraordinary story of "Phyllis Pearsall who, in 1936, single-handedly mapped London by walking its streets and unwittingly created a publishing phenomenon - the A-Z maps." Please read this book!

[Irene Chirtas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiring

[trishtrash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mrs. P’s Journey explores the life of Phyllis Pearsall, the woman who created the first* A-Z map of London. It’s a biography that takes a detailed look at the lives of her parents, so perhaps ‘family biography’ would be a better description. Phyllis Pearsall’s father was self-centred, bad-tempered and obsessed with proving himself by achieving monetary worth, an ambition that led him to start a map-making company, a business ownership almost ridiculously at odds with his impatient temperament. Her mother was, unfortunately, an independent spirit with many great qualities who nevertheless ruined herself against the rocks of her first and second marriage… from this quagmire of violent, often embarrassing background, Phyllis emerged as an intelligent, motivated, capable young woman with an artistic gift and her father’s determinedness, whose personal motto was on we go.

This is a fantastically interesting story, from both a human and historical viewpoint, moving and for the most part, well told. There are two flaws in Hartley’s approach, and they spoil surprisingly little… the first is the author’s inability to stick to a timeline. I’m not talking about an occasional interjection of an earlier anecdote; it’s more as though Sarah Hartley has a terminal case of the ‘oh-that-reminds-me’s, peppering any given scene with back-story and hardly caring whether things are told in chronological order; nothing is set up before-hand, which gives the writing a random if adventurous feel, quite well suited to its subject but not very comfortable for the reader who must pay closer than usual attention not to what is happening, but when.

The other flaw, not really obvious until you do some research, is that Phyllis herself was an ‘imaginative’ memoir writer, shall we say, and the author of Mrs. P’s Journey hasn’t even stuck to the facts therein religiously. There’s a line where biography becomes biographical fiction, and I sometimes felt Ms. Hartley straying towards it.

Despite that, I enjoyed this book. It described a life that I found fascinating and admirable; ‘fearless Phyllis’ might have inherited her father’s sense of the dramatic, but she tempered it with reasonableness, friendliness, and incredible achievement.


*Sort of. The first marketable A-Z, anyway.

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Phyllis Pearsall grew up around cartography and decided after a failed marriage to make her own map of London. She did it at a time when the London maps were horribly out of date. Through a process of trial and error and thousands of miles walked, she put together the London A to Z map and created a new company in the process.

It was the process of making the map and the effects of the map on the business, London, etc, is what I wanted to read about. From page 200 onward, Mrs. P's Journey finally comes on topic after languishing on Mrs. P's parents. While I suppose it's interesting to learn about her father's dabbling in cartography, the bulk of the book is wasted on irrelevant details.

[The Casket · Rating 1 out of 5]

Frankly this book is trailed as the story of the woman who created the London A-Z after reading more than 2/3rds of the book you still haven't arrived at the point where she starts mapping London. There are pages and pages about her parents especially her mother. It is clear that the author really just wanted to write this biography but didn't this it would sell so dressed it up as the story of her daughter. Don't bother reading thinking you are going to find out how the London A-Z was created you won't. You will be bored stiff long before London and its street emerge onto the pages.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing story! The A-Z is one of the most fantastic ideas...who would have guessed that its origins came from one woman walking the streets of London. I will treat my battered copy of the London A-Z with far more reverence

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

stick with it - really loved the ending.

[Nicolas Chinardet · Rating 1 out of 5]

A bad book that doesn't do justice to a fascinating subject

[Johanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmm 1.5 really but I am feeling generous. It is a very flawed book about a flawed but potentially fascinating woman. It is unclear whether the author thinks it is a semi-historical novel, entirely fictional or an autobiography. In a nutshell, it repeats uncritically the myth of Pearsall as an innovator - she claims to have walked the 18000 streets to map London, the idea that it had never been done before etc. Other areas seem dubious in the extreme - 5 weeks sleeping under Parisian bridges to minimal ill effect on her or her clothing. Then there are authorial howlers: as having a hospital full of injured soldiers before the war has begun, conversations, and events that were fictional but nothing to indicate that fact, no attempt to explore the relationship between Phyllis and Esme, a structure and time line that jumps in a chaotic random manner. It perhaps should have had a bibliography ( but maybe no other books were consulted other than Phyllis' own).
On the plus side, it can't have been easy being a woman in business in that period, and if you didn't want a conventional married life that too would have been a challenge. I suspect she was something of a Walter Mitty character and if half the stuff about her childhood is true it isn't surprising.
This book should have been fascinating instead it was fatuous.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the unlikely yet supposedly true tale of Phyllis Pearsall, nee Gross, who puts London (and indeed herself) on the map, by developing the A-Z of London. This account was published 20 years ago and I would like to know how and why the author chose to research and write this story at that time. The subject of map-making is rather dry, but Sarah Hartley enlivens her account with a bright style and the backstory of Phyllis's childhood and dysfunctional parents. In the Foreword, the author acknowledges that Phyllis and her family were surrounded by rumour and were themselves liberal with the truth; so, with only Phyllis's scant memoirs and the recollections of others, Hartley takes a bold approach, adding colour, detail, sentimentality, and totally imagining the interactions and dialogue. The result reads more like fiction, and disappointingly just how she went about charting the streets of London is never described. Yet I give credence to the thread borne out by those who knew her: that she was strong, determined, artistic and had to overcome much personal tragedy. No one without those qualities - and given the awful parenting she suffered - could otherwise have accomplished what Phyllis Pearsall did, as well as leave the impressive legacy of her cartographic business 'family'. 3,5

[Codex · Rating 1 out of 5]

At best this was a frustrating and most annoying book to read. The writing style was decidedly jarring, awkward, and seemingly devoid of any natural “flow”. At times it appeared as though disjointed thoughts had been thrown together without concern for what should come first and what next.

The story as presented was both disappointing and misleading: it did not deliver on its promise and in general misplaced focus and emphasis. All of this left much to be desired and did not make for a good read. To my mind the book fails because of poor execution.

(It should be noted that Phyllis Pearsall’s story stands on its own merit as represented by the facts. It has its own story to tell and does so without reservation.)

[HelenaR · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazingly resilient and kind lady Phyllis was. As the title says this is about her life and not just about mapping which some reviewers seemed to be hoping for so if that is what you are looking for then this may not be the book for you. However, her life was anything but mundane and I sometimes felt I was reading a work of fiction as it is hard to believe that so much happened within the life of one person. There were so many massive setbacks in her life and yet her achievements, not just in mapping terms but in her mental attitude to life, are truly inspirational. I can not believe that I had never heard of Phyllis Pearsall or had any idea how the A to Z company came about before this book was recommended to me. I feel she deserves a lot more credit.

[Serge Bedzhyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best, but also not the worst attempt at a semi-fictional biography. Too little about the actual atlas/map creation, far too many dramatic elements. Despite being surrounded by the controversy (Google for “the untold sixties az”) it’s still worth reading as an example of a biographical piece where the author attempts not just to tell you about a person, dates and events, but to depict character’s thoughts, motivation, and reasoning underlying their actions, being that looking for her father approval or struggling to overcome the childhood traumas. In any case, if you give it the benefit of the doubt it could be an interesting read.

[Judith Falkner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an uncomfortable read at times as Mrs P certainly had a terrible family background. The book was strangely put together, jumping about the timeline but with great chunks missing. And the book’s subject still felt to be a stranger by the end of the book although her achievement of mapping out London for the A-Z guide was vividly described.
I didn’t enjoy the book because of the unpleasantness of her family but Mrs P herself deserves 4* for her fortitude and courage.

[Jo Birkett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Far too much about her early life, far too little about making the A-Z. Early life, family and later life certainly interesting but not so much what I was after and there is too much fiction padding it out; she did keep journals from which much can be reconstructed but not amd of thought, reactions, conversations etc. An endearing character and I'm glad to have read it but not 5*.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned on page xi. This book may be a wonderful read but it is missold. The author writes - my task, however, has not been one of detective...I have not felt uncomfortable interweaving elements of fiction into fact. That’s not history which is what I thought I was getting.

[Brenda]

What a pity it took the author so many dis jointed stories of Mrs Ps childhood (which was horiffic,so badly treated by her crazy parents)that I got bored before the title which is why I wanted to read the
book even began,so sadly I gave up.I will finish reading at some point.

[Lynda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poor, mismatched, so much about Phyllis Pearsall’s sad and shocking childhood, her selfish parents and their selfish uncaring behaviours as they tried one up man-ship tactics. Disappointed, disjointed & haphazard.

Best line ‘the sea on the Sussex coast is a placid stretch of dull oyster capable of twisting into a mood worthy of any adolescent’

[Jessica Ellis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know why it took over half of the book to get to the part where it actually talked about Phyllis creating the A-to-Z map?

It had so much potential, it just talked about Sandor and Bella too much !!

[Lisa Bywell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't be put off by the twee title and cover. Excellent biography about this bohemian family and what they achieved. And who doesn't love reading about maps? And paper! And publishing of course.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

London is the best walking city in the world. Now I know how the wonderful A-Z map was created and published.

[Doris Raines · Rating 4 out of 5]

I LIKE THIS BOOK.

[Beverley Cole · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fabulous read. Honestly if you did not know it was a true story you would believe it to be a work of fiction. Marvelous.

[Christel Keijzer · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enthralling piece of London history told with some entertaining embellishments of an extremely dedicated personage, Phyllis Sandor Pearsall born in the early 2oth century.

[Helen Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unusual book, was interesting, but not sure if I would recommend it
Sorry

[Jules · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mrs P's life was all kinds of extraordinary. She deserves better than this workaday book.

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story of an unrated, determined woman .

Berated by her father, achieving the remarkable in an age without technology .

An amazing story and wonderfully written