 Sheila Hodgetts’ artistic collaborator, Edward Jeffrey, created Toby Twirl, visually (albeit, in a Rupert-like mould), basing Toby on a soft toy that his wife was making at the time.Hodgett's must have explained, also, that the name “Twirl”, related to the pig-features of the character, and, by implication, Toby's parents, including, in the early stories, an eponymous pig's twirly corkscrew tail.Before illustrating the first of the stories, Toby Twirl in Pogland, Edward Jeffrey had worked for the publishing company, Sampson, Low, producing a large number of book-cover illustrations for adult novels.