This is the first publication of what must be regarded as Spare’s finest sketchbook of automatic drawings. It was created in 1924, during an immensely introspective period of his life. A dark and bestial eroticism is captured within these images which are disturbingly hideous, and which contain some of the greatest grotesque art since the Middle Ages. The original unfinished sketchbook was purchased by the eccentric art historian Gerald Reitlinger, who later told Spare’s friend Frank Letchford that he would happily sell his Matisse prints but would never part with his Spare drawings. The work is similar in style to the drawings included in Spare’s A Book of Automatic Drawing (1925) but more finely detailed and less calligraphic.