Mervyn Peake  was born in China (1911) from a missionary family. He moved to England in 1923 and entered the Royal Academy in 29. Through his career, crossed by World War II, he published  several novels and collections of poems valued also by  his own beautiful illustrations. In 1951 he won the Heinemann Prize for Literature for Gormenghast and The Glassblowers and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

When invited to illustrate other authors, Mervin Peake felt that by accepting the task he would have to  “subordinate totally to the book, and slide into another man’s soul”.

His illustrated version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland uses a fine cross-hatching style and was first published by The Continental Book Company/Zephyr Press (Stockholm, 1946) an edition “not to be introduced into the British Empire or the USA“.

The UK version was published by Allan Wingate in 1954.