Now shipping...

We're delighted to say that copies of Imaginer 5 are now shipping out to their new owners!

Many thanks to everyone who has placed a pre-order for this fifth volume of Clive's artwork.  Over the next few days we'll be sending out fulfilment emails as we package and ship them from London and Los Angeles. Many of the deluxe copies are already on their way and the regular editions will be hard on their heels, so do please check your inbox for a tracking notification!

Right - back to the packing, under the watchful eye of Clive's suspended creature...

Phil & Sarah

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Happy New Year!

As we get back to work this week after the Christmas break, we've got plenty to look forward to in 2018...

We're delighted to be continuing to release titles in the new series of Clive's play scripts as affordable paperbacks.  It's been great to hear all the positive comments about The Magician and The History of the Devil - a huge thank you to everyone who has ordered them (and we hope to see productions springing up worldwide!).

Our next two titles are Crazyface and Hunters in the Snow, set for publication in a few weeks' time.

Crazyface was written by Clive in 1982 for the Cockpit Youth Theatre in London and centres around the fool Tyl Eulenspiegel as he stumbles across a secret that nations are prepared to kill for.

Hunters in the Snow has never before been published and is a play from 1973 inspired by the works of Breugel. It includes a character called The Dutchman, originally played by Doug Bradley, that Clive would later see echoes of in the dialogue and bearing of Hellraiser's lead cenobite, Pinhead.

And... we'll be adding many more images from the Archive to the gallery here, with a programme to add at least one new image each and every day this month! Leading off today is a double with an FX storyboard from Hellraiser: Bloodline and the cover of a US presskit for Galilee.

In the meantime, we continue to work with Clive on the Imaginer art books - we'll have a shipping update for Imaginer 5 later this month...

Here's to a great 2018!

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What's new..?

Recently arrived to add to the archive, here's a quick look at some of the things that have come our way!

First up, the fabulous original art for the cover of one of the first run Nightbreed comics (issue #12). Painted by John Rheaume, this representation of Rawhead Rex has superb attention to detail. This photo doesn't do justice to Matt Ryan Tobin's stunning art, shown here on the Arrow Hellraiser steelbook and Christopher Young's soundtrack on vinyl (it's also on a glorious Mondo poster which is currently heading to the framers!) 

Other movies here - a Spanish language VHS of Lord of Illusions is new to us and the new Kino Lorber Rawhead Rex Blu-ray was released last month. The Art of Horror Movies is Stephen Jones's latest offering from Applause - a fascinating walk through poster and press art from around the world (including work for Hellraiser sequels, Nightbreed, Lord of Illusions and Quicksilver Highway). Hugely insightful and definitely recommended.

Thanks to Cemetery Dance for advance copies of Detours (contains A Night's Work) and Reading Stephen King (with Clive's 2007 speech to the Canadian Booksellers Association), and to Steve Dillon for the Hellraiser-inspired Empath's Tale collection. Earthling Publications' beautiful lettered edition of The Scarlet Gospels is a great addition to its suite of CB publications.

Last, but not least, we love this Candyman figure! Sculpted in polymer clay, Clay Disarray produced this figure as a one-off to create a photographic poster for the movie and we're delighted to give it a home in the archive. (There's also a Clay Disarray Pinhead out there somewhere..!)

A quick reminder that we're turning around orders for the new Clive Barker Playscripts within 24 hours, so there's still time to get copies for you or your very best friends for Christmas!

Clive Barker Playscripts

For a long time we've wanted to share the texts of Clive's plays which are held here in the archive - so we're delighted to announce that as of November 2017 we'll be publishing a series of full scripts.

The first two titles - The Magician and The History of the Devil - are available now through the Archive store.

This is the first edition of The Magician - a one-act play in the Commedia dell' Arte tradition. Originally performed by The Dog Company in 1978, this first publication of the full script includes 14 photos of the original production, poster art and manuscript pages from the archive.

The History of the Devil is one of Clive's most successful plays, with productions continuing around the world long after it was first performed by The Dog Company in 1980. This new publication of the full script includes 7 photos of the original production, poster art and manuscript pages from the archive.

• The Magician: Paperback first edition with cover art by Clive Barker, 92 pages, $6 plus shipping

• The History of the Devil: Paperback edition with cover art by Clive Barker, 188 pages, $9 plus shipping

Further titles will become available over coming months!

"These plays are not finished things, they're invitations to collective work... These are blueprints, not houses. I am laying out the ground rules for a circus, and inviting wild beasts, clowns, and strippers on to parade themselves in any and every combination.
"What it comes down to is that these are texts which are meant to be starting places for very particular intellectual and artistic adventures. And they are particular to the group of people who have been gathered there to have the adventure. They are deliberately free-form. They are deliberately overpacked. They are deliberately ragged, unhoned, raw. I make no apology for any of that. They are intended to be, I hope, inspirational rather than repressive.
"They are ways to say to actors and directors and designers, 'Here are some ideas, here are some lines, here are some situations. Make masks, make dance, make music, make mime, make whatever you want to personalise this experience.'"

Clive Barker

Pre-order Imaginer 5!

Clive Barker: Imaginer Volume 5

We're delighted to reveal the latest Imaginer cover image and to announce that pre-orders will open later today!
There are three options available to pre-order Volume 5 :
•    the regular edition (limited to 1,000 copies) at a discounted pre-order price
•    the deluxe edition, signed by Clive (limited to 100 numbered copies) at a discounted pre-order price
•    LIMITED TIME ONLY - until 8 October 2017 - have your name printed in all copies as a special 'thank you' for your support of the Imaginer art archiving project by selecting the 'Deluxe edition With Thanks' option. 
These pre-order prices will remain available until publication, when full retail prices will start to apply.
As with previous volumes, all pre-ordered books will come with an exclusive A5 art card featuring art from the Imaginer series, and all copies will also include an A4 mini-poster.

Bookplate for deluxe copies of Imaginer 5, signed by Clive 

Thanks again for all the wonderful feedback on previous volumes - we can't wait to get the next Imaginer out to you!

This time around, Clive wanted to share some of his thoughts on Imaginer 5 - so do please head over to Revelations where you can read the full conversation with him as we look through some of the art selected for this latest volume.

Clive: "I'm seldom lost for words but I am sort of lost for words! It's gorgeous. It's gorgeous - it's the best so far.  
"I know I said at the beginning of Imaginer, 'This is probably the best Clive Barker between covers' or whatever it was, you know, about Tom's first book? I feel I need to re-state, because of this, a whole new level of achievement by you guys.
"And I very much feel - I feel so passionate about it - that I want to make sure the world knows that this is not the Imaginer you think you knew!"

Summer in London

It's been a super-busy spring and summer here at the Archive and some things are piling up in front of us - case in point, these recent arrivals!

The books are waiting to be logged on the Revelations site and shelved in the archive alongside the Dorbz Pinhead, which is quite the cutest model we've seen in a while! We had no idea that this fabulous fold-out 3D Imajica promo was made by HarperCollins UK back in 1991 so we're delighted with that find - it promised a special mechanised 'Giant Interactive Box Book' for booksellers to display but we're pretty sure that idea didn't quite materialise... 

Right - back to work - we'll have news on new projects shortly once everyone's back from holidays - enjoy the rest of the summer!

P&S

Bookplates...

Here's a quick look at the design for the Imaginer 4 bookplates before they are tipped into the deluxe editions. Clive has signed all 100 and pre-orders are now set for shipping! 

Shipping update...

Just a quick update to let you know that we're preparing to ship pre-ordered copies of Clive Barker: Imaginer 4 out to North American customers!

Please note, if you've pre-ordered a Deluxe copy, signed by Clive, these will ship direct from the UK in a few weeks' time as they are hand-prepared here in London. Regular (limited to 1,000) copies heading to the UK, Europe and beyond will also ship then - we'll keep everyone updated...

Pre-order rewards, including art cards and bookmarks, are also on their way!

Where is Imaginer 4..?

Those of you with a keen eye will have seen that we're running a little later on delivery of Imaginer 4 than we had hoped..!

However, with all the books now safely printed and bound, we're tracking their steady progress across the oceans from Hong Kong... So, the all-important delivery dates: we're currently anticipating one batch to arrive in the United States and ship to North American customers in mid-May, and the remaining copies to arrive in the UK and ship to all other countries in early June. 

The even better news is that Clive has just signed off on the selection of canvases for the fifth Imaginer volume which is being laid-out as we speak - more on that very soon!

And still we keep going - Clive has also been talking through the painting selection for the sixth volume and beyond (actually, he keeps thinking of ideas for new series beyond these eight - we'll try to keep up!!)

In the meantime, and before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we're really impressed with the fourth volume - everyone in the production and design teams continues to work incredibly hard to maintain the quality of this fabulous series - and we can't wait to get it into your patient hands. Here are some quick snaps, so you can see what lies in wait for you on this one!

Imaginer 4 - mini-poster, deluxe and regular editions

Imaginer 4 - deluxe edition in clamshell case

Archive updates!

Collecting and sorting Clive's work is only part of what we do and in the last few months we've had lots of great opportunities to share the manuscripts and artwork far and wide.

In the gallery here, we've recently added images including behind-the-scenes shots from Hellraiser, storyboards from Lord of Illusions, rarely-seen material from publishers for Everville, Imajica and other novels and manuscript pages from Abarat and The Scarlet Gospels.

If you've not visited in a while, do go take a look!

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Recently, we've been working through lots of new manuscripts and notes for projects both published and unpublished - it's like constructing a multi-dimensional jigsaw as we place work thematically and chronologically, often sheet by sheet. As the collections come together we're then able to make them available in different ways.

Some of the recent requests to share material in publications have come from:

• Arrow Films (The Scarlet Box - Hellraiser Blu-ray set)

• The British Library (Horror: A Literary History)

• Gauntlet Press (The Great and Secret Show, Everville, forthcoming)

• Seraphim Ink (The Thief of Always anniversary edition)

• Fiddleblack (The Last Illusion)

• Dark Regions Press (The Body Book)

...with a few more waiting in the wings...

And next up from us will be our book on the making of Hellraiser, the Imaginer art volumes and a series of Clive's plays.  More news to follow!