Having just read a book about Peake, I felt the desire to read a book by him. Tempted as I am to re-read Gormenghast, I've decided on something more manageable, to wit his 1948 children's book, written as a series of letters from an unnamed uncle to an unnamed nephew, illustrated in Peake's distinctive style, telling of high seas adventures and expeditions in search of strange beasts, which he does find, accompanied by mutant turtle-dog, Jackson!
Gorgeous 2001 reprint from Methuen Press. Four color printing: Black, white, with the yellowed paper from the original manuscript, plus red for the blood spots. 😄
pickI wish I'd read this book when I was a child, as I think I would have been as entranced by it then as I was by The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia. Not that it's like them in terms of the story, plot or characters, but in its magical evocation of a new, strange world of possibilities it certainly stands with those books in my mind.
I did have the fortune of coming to it in time to read to my children when they were little. 👇🏼
Letters from a Lost Uncle | 
