The Gormenghast Trilogy

Description

One of the greatest imaginative feats of the twentieth century. A beautiful fairytale filled with unexpected plot twists. Gormenghast is the vast, crumbling castle to which the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, is lord and heir. Titus is expected to rule this gothic labyrinth of turrets and dungeons (and his eccentric and wayward subjects) according to strict age-old rituals, but things are changing in the castle. Titus must contend with treachery, manipulation and murder as well as his own longing for a life beyond the castle walls.

Mervyn Peake was born in 1911. He is perhaps most famous for the 'Gormenghast' trilogy which were published between 1946 and 1959 - Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone. He has also written a book for children, Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor and several volumes of poetry. He was also a gifted book illustrator. He died in 1968.

A master of the macabre and a traveller through the deeper and darker chasms of the imagination * The Times * Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It [The Gormenghast Trilogy] is a very, very great work...a classic of our age -- Robertson Davies [Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience -- C. S. Lewis The Gormenghast Trilogy is one of the most important works to come out of the age that produced The Four Quartets, The Unquiet Grave, Brideshead Revisited, The Loved One, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four -- Anthony Burgess * Spectator *