Richard Appignanesi

Introducing Freud began life in 1979 as Freud for Beginners, a paperback that explained psychoanalysis in comic-strip panels at a time when almost nothing else did. Richard Appignanesi wrote the text and Oscar Zarate drew it, and the two names belong together on it. The book started a series: Appignanesi went on to originate and edit the Introducing line, which now runs to well over a hundred graphic guides on everything from Marx to quantum theory. Born in Montreal in 1940 to Italian parents, he settled in Britain, took a doctorate in history, published the Italian Gothic novel trilogy Destroying Angel and Losing the Dead, and later devised Manga Shakespeare, which sets the plays in comic form. He has also edited the journal Third Text.