British Library acquires Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast notebooks and more...

"The British Library has acquired the archive of the writer and artist, Mervyn Peake, best known as the author of Gormenghast, for which he won the Heinemann Prize for Literature in 1951. With support from independent charity The Art Fund, Friends of the British Library, Friends of the National Libraries and individual donors, Peake's extraordinary creative endeavours across an astonishing variety of media and forms will bepreserved in perpetuityand made available for present and future generations of researchers. The collection came to the Library in 28 containers and comprises 39 autograph Gormenghast Notebooks as well as the complete set of original drawings for Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland, the original manuscript of which is currently on display in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery at the British Library. Lesser well known short stories, war poems, radio plays and nonsense verse are also included in this uniquely visual archive..."