Book description
Enter the world of Gormenghast...the vast crumbling castle to which
the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, is Lord and heir. Gothic
labyrinth of roofs and turrets, cloisters and corridors, stairwells
and dungeons, it is also the cobwebbed kingdom of Byzantine government
and age-old rituals, a world primed to implode beneath the weight of
centuries of intrigue, treachery, manipulation and murder.
Gormenghast is more than a sequel to Titus Groan - it
is an enrichment and deepening of that book. The fertility of
incident, character and rich atmosphere combine in a tour de force
that ranks as one of the twentieth century's most remarkable feats
of imaginative writing.
Mervyn Peake was born in 1911 in Kuling, Central Southern China,
where his father was a medical missionary. His education began in
China and then continued at Eltham College in South East London,
followed by the Croydon School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools.
Subsequently he became an artist, married the painter Maeve Gilmore in
1937 and had three children. During the Second World War he
established a reputation as a gifted book illustrator for Ride a
Cock Horse (1940), The Hunting of the Snark (1941), and
The Rime of The Ancient Mariner (1943). Other books include
Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland and Grimm's Household
Tales (both 1946) and Treasure Island (1949).
Titus Groan was published in 1946, followed in 1950 by
Gormenghast. Among his other works are Shapes and Sounds
(1941), Rhymes Without Reason (1944), Letters from a Lost
Uncle (1948) and Mr Pye (1953). Titus Alone was
published in 1959. Mervyn Peake died in 1968.
