Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English writer, artist, poet, and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. The four works were part of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, the completion of which was prevented by his death. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R. Tolkien, but Peake's surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology and philology.
Gormenghast is a fantasy series by British author Mervyn Peake, about the inhabitants of Castle Gormenghast, a sprawling, decaying, Gothic structure. Originally conceived as a single on-going novel, the series was ended by Peake's death and comprises three novels: Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950) and Titus Alone (1959); and a novella, Boy in Darkness (1956), whose canonical status is debated. Peake was writing a fourth novel, Titus Awakes, at the time of his death in 1968. The book was completed by Peake's widow Maeve Gilmore in the 1970s, but was not published until 2011 after it was discovered by their family.
Steerpike is a fictional character in Mervyn Peake's novels Titus Groan and Gormenghast.
Mordant's Need is a fantasy two-part book series by American writer Stephen R. Donaldson, comprising the novels The Mirror of Her Dreams (1986) and A Man Rides Through (1987).
Boy in Darkness is a novella by English writer Mervyn Peake. It was first published in 1956 by Eyre & Spottiswoode as part of the anthology Sometime, Never: Three Tales of Imagination. A "corrupt" version of Boy in Darkness was published both in an anthology, The Inner Landscape, and separately in 1976 with an introduction by Peake's widow, Maeve Gilmore. Referring to the corrupt text, she wrote that "although the Boy in Boy in Darkness is assuredly Titus Groan, [Peake] did not call him so by name"; however, adding the name Titus was one of the specific changes that Peake made between writing and publishing his novella. The correct text has recently become available again in an anthology entitled Boy in Darkness and Other Stories, with a foreword by Joanne Harris and a preface by Peake's son Sebastian, as well as Maeve Gilmore's uncorrected introduction from 1976.
Gormenghast is a fantasy novel by British writer Mervyn Peake, the second in his Gormenghast series. It is the story of Titus Groan, 77th Earl of Groan and Lord of Gormenghast Castle, from age 7 to 17. As the story opens, Titus dreads the pre-ordained life of ritual that stretches before him. To Titus, Master of Ritual Barquentine and his apprentice Steerpike are the embodiment of all he wants to rebel against. An important sub-plot involves Titus at school, where he encounters the professors, especially Bellgrove, who becomes Headmaster of Gormenghast school.
Titus Alone is a novel written by Mervyn Peake and first published in 1959. It is the third work in the Gormenghast trilogy. The other works are Titus Groan, and Gormenghast. With the trilogy, a fourth work, the novella Boy in Darkness, and a fifth, the fragment Titus Awakes, are often considered part of a larger "Gormenghast series". It was re-edited by Langdon Jones in 1970 using the original manuscript.
Titus Awakes is the editorial title applied to a novel being planned by Mervyn Peake at the time he became too ill to write, about 1960. It was to have been the fourth novel in the Gormenghast series, after Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone. Titus Awakes remains unfinished, as the author succumbed to illness in 1968 before the work could be completed.
Titus Crow is the main character in the eponymous series of horror fiction books by Brian Lumley. The books are based on H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.
Neve McIntosh is a Scottish actress.
Barquentine is a fictional character in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series. He is the son of Sourdust, the Master of Ritual of Gormenghast Castle. He is a one-legged, hunchbacked dwarf with a bitter, vicious personality; he never washes, he dresses in filthy rags, and his hair and beard are long, tangled and dirty. He is frequently taunted by the castle's children, who sing "Rotten leg, rotten spine – ya! ya! Barquentine!"
Titus Groan is a novel by Mervyn Peake, first published in 1946. It is the first novel in the Gormenghast series.
The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was an imprint of American publisher Ballantine Books. Launched in 1969, the series reissued a number of works of fantasy literature which were out of print or dispersed in back issues of pulp magazines, in cheap paperback form—including works by authors such as James Branch Cabell, Lord Dunsany, Ernest Bramah, Hope Mirrlees, and William Morris. The series lasted until 1974.
Burpham is a rural village and civil parish in the Arun District of West Sussex, England. The village is on an arm of the River Arun slightly less than 2 miles (3.2 km) northeast of Arundel.
Gormenghast is a four-episode television series based on the first two novels of the Gothic fantasy Gormenghast series by Mervyn Peake. It was produced and broadcast by the BBC.
Gloriana, or The Unfulfill'd Queen is a work of literary fantasy by British novelist Michael Moorcock. It was first published in 1978 and has remained in print ever since.
Titus was a silverback mountain gorilla of the Virunga Mountains, observed by researchers almost continuously over his entire life. He was the subject of the 2008 PBS Nature/BBC Natural World documentary film Titus: The Gorilla King.
Maeve Patricia Mary Theresa Gilmore was a British painter, sculptor and writer, and the wife of author Mervyn Peake.
Gormenghast is an opera in three acts composed by Irmin Schmidt to an English-language libretto by Duncan Fallowell, based on Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy. It premiered at the Opernhaus Wuppertal on 15 November 1998.
