Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Peake (born July 9, 1911, Guling, Jiangxi province, China—died November 17, 1968, Burcot, Oxfordshire, England) was an English novelist, poet, painter, playwright, and illustrator, best known for the bizarre Titus Groan trilogy of novels and for his illustrations of his novels and of children’s stories.

Educated in China and in Kent, England, Peake went to art school and trained as a painter, but he was stricken with a progressive illness that made him increasingly helpless until his death.

His Titus Groan novels—consisting of Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950), and Titus Alone (1959)—display a gallery of eccentric and freakish characters in an idiosyncratic Gothic setting. Peake’s drawings and paintings, particularly his illustrations for the novels and for children’s books, are only a little less known, and his poem The Glassblowers (1950) won a literary prize, together with Gormenghast. Peake also wrote a play, The Wit to Woo (performed 1957).