Mervyn Peake

Also known as Mervyn Laurence Peake, Mervyn L. Peake, Mervyn Lawrence Peake

English author and illustrator (1911–1968)

Person · Open Library

Born: 1911
Died: 1968
Works: 107

Top works

Titus alone
Household tales
Knights of Madness
Sometime Never
Le Cycle de Gormenghast

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Country: GB
Active from: 1911-07-09
Active to: 1968-11-17

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 167
Total plays: 1,348

Mervyn Laurence Peake (9 July 1911 – 17 November 1968) was an English modernist writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. (The three works were part of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, the completion of which was halted by his death.) They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R. Tolkien, but his surreal fiction was influenced by his early <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Mervyn+Peake">

~22 min read

Article

Mervyn Laurence Peake (9 July 1911 – 17 November 1968) was a British 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.

Peake also wrote poetry and literary nonsense in verse form, short stories for adults and children (Letters from a Lost Uncle, 1948), stage and radio plays, and Mr Pye (1953), a relatively tightly structured novel in which God implicitly mocks the evangelical pretensions and cosy world-view of the eponymous hero.