Titus Awakes (Gormenghast)

Maeve Gilmore was a writer and painter. She married Mervyn Peake in 1937. She is the author of A World Away: Memoir of Mervyn Peake 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.

"Titus Awakes is a treasure salvaged from the ruins'" New Statesman "Peake does not, as some have said, defy classification; rather, he is beyond classification in any single genre, and therein perhaps lies his genius. In his centenary year it is to be hoped that the latest surge of interest in his enormous range of work will finally help to place him in his rightful position as one of Britain's most brilliant, original and creative figures'" Times Literary Supplement "A century after his birth, the gothic surrealism of Peake's fantasy world still attracts new fans. With more than 100 of his drawings, this splendid anniversary edition will entice even more into the towers, cellars and corridors of his blackly comic castle" I