About Phyllis Pearsall
Phyllis Isobella Pearsall (25 September 1906 – 28 August 1996) was a British painter, publisher, artist and writer who founded the Geographers' A–Z Map Company, for which she is regarded as one of the most successful business people of the twentieth century. She has erroneously been credited with creating London's first popular indexed street map. == Early life and education == She was born Phyllis Isobella Gross in East Dulwich, London on 25 September 1906. Her father, Alexander Gross (originally Grosz), was a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant and her mother, Isabella Crowly, an Irish-Italian Roman Catholic suffragette, whose parents disapproved of the match. Phyllis Gross was baptised a Roman Catholic. She grew up with her older brother, the artist Anthony Gross, in London and travelled all over Europe from an early age. Her father founded the cartographic company Geographia Ltd, which produced, among others, street maps of most British towns and although successful, eventually went bankrupt; Gross relaunched the company in the United States as the Geographia Map Company a few years later. Her parents had a very tense marriage which soon dissolved. Her mother remarried but died some years later in an asylum. Phyllis Gross was educated at Roedean School, a private boarding school near Brighton, which she had to leave when her father went bankrupt.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.