'Strangeness is where we live, and Mervyn Peake threads its mazes under slant moons and dark stars, unwinding a clew for us to follow.His drawings offer musical voices singing nights and dawns.His ear is tuned to what is beyond the noise of things, his eye to the unseen beyond the seen. - Russell HobanIt is forty years since the death of Mervyn Peake (1911-68), the author of the much loved Gormenghast novels. To mark the anniversary this first comprehensive edition of Peake's poetry is published. It includes every black-and-white illustration he made for verse, together with unpublished drawings. Of the more than 230 poems in this collection, over 80 are printed for the first time. Robert Maslen's detailed work on the manuscripts reveals the poems as a dazzling link between the fantasy world of Gormenghast and the narrative of Peake's own life and the turbulent times he lived in.Peake emerges as a compelling poet, with an acute sense of his responsibilities as an artist, passionately engaged with current events, from unemployment in the 1930s to the horrors of the london Blitz and the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. He is also a fine love-poet and a sensitive observer of the human form. Readers who love Peake's novels, and those who are new to his work, will discover here one of he great originals of the twentieth century.Cover Painting: Mervyn Peake, The Glassblower.'