Organised by The British Library
The author of Gormenghast, and one of the great illustrators.
This event takes place in the British Library.
Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) is best known as author of the Gormenghast trilogy, a series of wonderful novels full of eccentric characters populating a bizarre, gothic fantasy world.
He was also a superb artist, in the tradition of great author-illustrators such as William Blake and Edward Lear. He not only drew scenes for his own books but for others too, particularly those that chimed with his own idiosyncratic mindset, such as Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark, Alice in Wonderland and the Brothers Grimm's Household Tales.
His extraordinary achievement is explored in this talk by Robert Maslen, Professor of Fantasy and Early Modern Literature, University of Glasgow, and editor of Peake's Complete Nonsense and Collected Poems. Chaired by Matthew Sangster, co-director of the University of Glasgow's Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic and author of An Introduction to Fantasy (2023).
Peake's literary and visual archives are housed at the British Library and a free display of his drawings, The fantastical world of Mervyn Peake: islands and seas can be visited in the Entrance Hall Gallery until 25 February 2024. His works are also included in our exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination.
This event accompanies the British Library exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination (27 October – 25 February) supported by Wayland Games and Unwin Charitable Trust:
Please arrive no later than 15 minutes before the start time of this event.
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