The existence of a distinctive Birmingham group of surrealist artists dates from the meeting of Conroy Maddox and John Melville in 1935, after an exchange of letters in the "Birmingham Post" about what they saw as the excessively conventional art scene in the city. Melville had been one of the "harbingers of surrealism" in Britain, producing a "Surrealist Nude" by 1930 and being described as a surrealist by critic R. H. Wilenski in 1932. Maddox had become a convert to surrealism after discovering one of Wilenski's books in Birmingham Central Library in 1935.