Phyllis Isobella Pearsall MBE (25 September 1906 – 28 August 1996) was a British painter 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.

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.

Later, she studied at the Sorbonne, spending her first few months in Paris sleeping rough before moving to a bedsit where she met the writer Vladimir Nabokov.

This stimulated her to produce a new map to cover the rapidly expanding area of London, including places of interest such as museums, bus routes etc.

[6][7] In her autobiography she points to one novelty: "House numbers along main roads; I've walked them from start to finish; you won't find them on any other London map.

Next she went to W H Smith where, after being snubbed for days by an office junior, she received an order for 1,250 copies, which she delivered using a hand barrow borrowed from the pub next door.

[6] In 1945, returning from a trip to Amsterdam where they were printing a new edition of the London map to get round shortages of paper in England, she was involved in a plane crash which left her with permanent scars.

[citation needed] A respected typographer, although not credited with the design of any typefaces, her arrangement of type is considered one of the most interesting of her age.

[15][better source needed] In 2005 Southwark Council placed a blue plaque on the house where she was born in Court Lane Gardens, Dulwich.

[17] In 2014 a musical about Phyllis Pearsall, The A-Z of Mrs P, written by Diane Samuels and Gwyneth Herbert, was performed at Southwark Playhouse.