All images © Mervyn Peake Estate
Best known for the Gormenghast Trilogy, Mervyn Peake, who died in 1968 and whose centenary is celebrated this year, was also an artist, an illustrator and a poet. As well as illustrating his own fiction (images 5-9), some of his finest drawings were for books by other authors. For grotesque satiric humour and Gothic sensibility he found a perfect match in Dickens, as his rather creepy illustrations for Bleak House beautifully attest.