The Glassblowers by Mervyn Peake 1950 First Edition Poetry inspired by Smethwick/Birmingham Glass Factory during World War II ~ Glassblowing

Title: The Glassblowers

Author: Mervyn Peake

Description: First Edition. Blue cloth boards with gilt lettering on spine and front cover. Faint finger-soiling to cloth. Bottom corners lightly rubbed. Interior is clean and unmarked. vi, 40 pages. Dust jacket has some light chipping at spine ends; worn corners; extremities rubbed; not price clipped; in an archival mylar sleeve.

Mervyn Peake's vivid poems, inspired by his experiences in a glassblowing factory in Britain during World War II. In 1943, Peake was commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee to record his impressions in the Chance Brothers glass-blowing factory in Smethwick, located just outside of Birmingham. ''I found on entering the huge, ruinous, grimy, wharf-walled buildings a world upon its own, a place of roaring fires and monstrous shadows. It appealed immediately to my imagination.''

Peake's verbal imagination activated by the environment of grime and firelight and, in addition to the several painting and drawings he produced, developed these poems. During the war, Smethwick, being an industrial town, was targeted and bombed by the Germans on multiple occasions. The Chance Brothers factory was producing glass for cathode ray tubes to used in radar.

Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Near Fine
Jacket Condition: Very Good+

Publisher: Eyre & Spottiswoode
Place: London
Year: 1950

Keywords: Smethwick, Birmingham, Chance Brothers, poetry,