Born in
Sussex, England, at the age of eight Moore emigrated with her family to
Australia, where she went to school in
Adelaide. She has said that at the age of fourteen her favourite book was
James Boswell’s
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. After leaving school, Moore took a variety of jobs.
Raymond Briggs’s book
Father Christmas (1973) inspired her to want to illustrate books, and she began to look for work as an illustrator. In the early 1980s, Moore returned to live in England, settling in Hampstead, while still working on picture books. Her
Six-Dinner Sid (1990), an illustrated book for children about a cat, took six months to complete but during the recession of the early 1990s her flat was repossessed. This had a happy outcome, as Moore then found an apartment in a large but decaying
Palladian house in a
Gloucestershire village, with good light in a room she planned to use as a studio. Not far from the
River Windrush, the countryside around the house inspired the illustrations for Moore’s edition of
Kenneth Grahame’s
The Wind in the Willows, which went on to sell more than a million copies. As of 2010, Moore was still living and working in Gloucestershire. Following her version of
The Wind in the Willows, she is reported to be working on a
sequel. ==Books by Inga Moore==