Mervyn Peake: A Biographical and Critical Exploration

by John Batchelor

Mervyn Peake, who was born into the troubled world of post-Imperial China in 1911, and died in London after a long illness in 1968, has become a cult-figure since the publication of his remarkable novels (inaccurately known as the 'Gormenghast trilogy') 'Titus Groan', 'Gormenghast',and 'Titus Alone'. This is the first published study of Peake's life and work. Despite the unique imaginative world of his novels, the connections between events of his life and the trajectory of his art are very close. Eccentric, engaging and chaotic, Peake was trained as a started as a painter and illustrator and had never envisaged writing a novel when he began work on the first of the Titus books. At different periods of his life he was in close contact with other writers and artists - notably Dylan Thomas, Graham Greene and the actor Esmond Knight - but his instinct preference was to isolate himself within his family and to work alone. His rich post-romantic poetry and his extraordinary prose amply vindicate this decision.

Genres: Biography

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

John Batchelor was educated at The King's School, Canterbury, and at Cambridge (and at the University of New Brunswick, in Canada). After the Cambridge Ph D he was a lecturer at Birmingham University, then a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and for the last phase of his career he was the Joseph Cowen Professor of English Literature at Newcastle University and is now an Emeritus Professor of that University. He has also been a visiting Professor at the University of South Florida, at the Jagellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and at Lancaster University's Ruskin Centre. Many of his books have been on academic themes (they include a literary history, The Edwardian Novelists, and short critical studies of Joseph Conrad, H.G.Wells and Virginia Woolf) but his first book was a biography of the writer and artist Mervyn Peake, and in his last four books (Joseph Conrad, John Ruskin, Lady Trevelyan and most recently Tennyson)he has returned to biography.