Mervyn Peake (July 9,1911 - November 17,1968)

Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English modernist writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books, though the Titus books would be more accurate: the three works that exist were the beginning of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, following his protagonist Titus Groan from cradle to grave, but Peake's untimely death prevented completion of the cycle, which is now commonly but erroneously referred to as a trilogy. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien, but his surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology and philology.

Peake also wrote poetry and literary nonsense in verse form, short stories for adults and children ('Letters from a Lost Uncle') , stage and radio plays, and Mr Pye, a relatively tightly-structured novel in which God implicitly mocks the evangelical pretensions and cosy world-view of the eponymous hero.

Peake first made his reputation as a painter and illustrator during the 1930s and 1940s, when he lived in London, and he was commissioned to produce portraits of well-known people. A collection of these drawings is still in the possession of his family. Although he gained little popular success in his lifetime, his work was highly respected by his peers, and his friends included Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene. His works are now included in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the Imperial War Museum.

Mervyn Peake's Published Books:

Bibliography

* Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor (1939)
* Shapes and Sounds (1941)
* Rhymes without Reason (1944)
* Titus Groan (1946)
* The Craft of the Lead Pencil (1946)
* Letters from a Lost Uncle (from Polar Regions) (1948)
* Drawings by Mervyn Peake (1949)
* Gormenghast (1950)
* The Glassblowers (1950)
* Mr Pye (1953)
* Figures of Speech (1954)
* Titus Alone (1959)
* The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb (1962)
* Poems and Drawings (1965)
* A Reverie of Bone and other Poems (1967)
* Selected Poems (1972)
* A Book of Nonsense (1972)
* The Drawings of Mervyn Peake (1974)
* Mervyn Peake: Writings and Drawings (1974)
* Twelve Poems (1975)
* Boy in Darkness (first separate edition,1976)
* Peake's Progress (1978)
* Ten Poems (1993)
* Eleven Poems (1995)
* The Cave (1996)

Illustrated books

* Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor (by himself) (Country Life,1939)
* Ride a Cock Horse and Other Nursery Rhymes (Chatto & Windus,1940)
* Hunting of the Snark (by Lewis Carroll)
* Alice in Wonderland (by Lewis Carroll)
* The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
* Household Tales (by the Brothers Grimm)
* All This and Bevin Too (by Quentin Crisp)
* Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (by Robert Louis Stevenson)
* Treasure Island (by Robert Louis Stevenson)
* Droll Stories (by Balzac) (Folio Society,1961)
* The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb (by himself) (1962)