Phyllis Pearsall died on 28 August 1996 in Shoreham, Kent, England, at the age of 89, having remained chairman of the Geographers' A-Z Map Company until her death.
Phyllis Pearsall died on 28 August 1996 at her home in Shoreham, Kent, at the age of 89. She remained actively involved with the Geographers' A-Z Map Company, which she had founded six decades earlier, serving as its chairman until her death.
In her later years, she had transferred ownership of the company into an employee trust, ensuring that the business she built would remain independent and benefit the staff who had helped sustain it, rather than being sold for personal profit—an unusual and progressive decision for a company founder of her era.
Her death marked the end of an extraordinary life that spanned continents, professions (including painting and writing), and decades of change in London's urban landscape. She was remembered in obituaries across major outlets, including the Los Angeles Times and British press, as a trailblazing entrepreneur whose personal determination created a lasting institution.
Pearsall's legacy endures through the continued publication of A-Z maps, through her autobiographies detailing her remarkable life (including Fleet Street, Tickets and A to Z and Women in My Life), and through her recognition as a pioneering woman in cartography and business, commemorated by plaques and retrospectives celebrating her contribution to British culture.