Skip to content
EntityQ6515· pop 29· linked from 256 articles

Mervyn Peake

Sign in to save

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">

via Last.fm · Mervyn Peake

Quotes

  • The paper is breathless Under the hand And the pencil is poised Like a warlock's wand.
  • There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humour. It is naked noise and naked malice.
  • Each day I live in a glass roomUnless I break it with the thrustingOf my senses and pass throughThe splintered walls to the great landscape.
  • But we have seen it in the air,A fairy like a William Pear
  • O'er seas that have no beachesTo end their waves upon,I floated with twelve peaches,A sofa and a swan.
  • I saw all of a suddenNo sign of any ship.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born
Mervyn Laurence Peake , ( 1911-07-09 ) 9 July 1911, Kuling , Jiujiang , Qing China
Died
17 November 1968 (1968-11-17) (aged 57), Burcot, Oxfordshire , England
Education
Eltham College ; Croydon School of Art ; Royal Academy Schools
Occupations
Writer, artist, poet, illustrator
Notable work
Gormenghast series
Spouse
Maeve Gilmore
Relatives
Jack Peñate (grandson)

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Show 5 more facts
date of birth
1911-07-09
date of death
1968-11-17
Commons Creator page
Mervyn Peake
Commons category
Mervyn Peake
Sources (3)

via Wikidata · CC0

~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.

Connections

Categories