New Releases by Mervyn Peake

A young heir matures within a bleak, sprawling castle filled with intrigue in this epic gothic trilogy, featuring over 100 illustrations by the author. Titus is expected to rule this extraordinary kingdom and his eccentric and wayward subjects. But with the arrival of an ambitious kitchen boy, Steerpike, the established order is thrown into disarray. Over the course of these three novels—Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone—Titus must contend with a kingdom about to implode beneath the weight of centuries of intrigue, treachery, manipulation, and murder. Intoxicating, rich, and unique, The Gormenghast Trilogy is a tour de force that ranks as one of the twentieth century''s most remarkable feats of imaginative writing. This special edition, published for the centenary of Mervyn Peake’s birth, is accompanied by over one hundred of Peake''s dazzling drawings. Praise for Mervyn Peake and the Gormenghast Trilogy “[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 “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 is a very, very great work . . . A classic of our age.” —Robertson Davies “[A] magnificent ediface spun from thin air by a tortured genius.” —Liz Jensen, author of The Rapture “This extravagant epic about a labyrinthine castle populated with conniving Dickensian grotesques is the true fantasy classic of our time.” —Washington Post Book World

A final volume of the classic Gormenghast novels, produced from recently discovered manuscripts written by Peake''s wife and based on his outlines, follows Titus'' nightmarish departure from Castle Gormenghast.

''Nonsense'', wrote Mervyn Peake, ''can take you by the hand and lead you nowhere. It''s magic.'' Peake (1911-68) is one of the great English nonsense poets, in the tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. His verses lead the reader into places where cause is cut free of effect and language takes on a giddy life of its own. Malicious bowler hats threaten their owners, a cake is chased across an ocean by a rakish knife, aunts become flatfish or live on sphagnum moss. Fully annotated, with a detailed introduction, Complete Nonsense contains all the poems and illustrations from Peake''s Book of Nonsense (1972), with forty unpublished poems discovered in manuscripts and thirty from uncollected sources, including all the nonsense verses from his novels. It reprints complete - for the first time and in colour - the words and images from Rhymes without Reason (1944), and Peake''s comic masterpiece Figures of Speech (1954). All the poems have been newly edited, often from Peake''s manuscripts, by Robert Maslen, editor of Peake''s Collected Poems (Carcanet), and Peter Winnington, the leading Peake scholar and biographer. Peake wrote of the rare art that glitters with the divine lunacy we call nonsense'': Complete Nonsense glitters with Peake''s benign and wayward imagination.

This edition of one of the classic masterpieces of illustration has been re-originated from Peakes original artwork and includes a selection of his remarkable working sketches never before published.Celebrating the centenary of Mervyn Peakes birth in 2011.

“A startling and unusual creation by an author who had imagination to burn and burn again . . . A feat of storytelling unmatched in wit or imagination.” —SFF180 The basis for the 2000 BBC series Now in development by Showtime As the novel opens, Titus, lord of Castle Gormenghast, has abdicated his throne. Born and brought to the edge of manhood in the huge, rotting castle, Titus rebels against the age-old ritual of which he is both lord and prisoner and rushes headlong into the world. From that moment forward, he is thrust into a stormy land of a dark imagination, where figures and landscapes loom up with the force and vividness of a dream—or a nightmare. This final installment in the Gormenghast Trilogy is a fantastic triumph—a conquest awash in imagination, terror, and charm. Praise the Gormenghast Trilogy “There is nothing in literature like Mervyn Peake’s remarkable Gormenghast novels . . . They were crafted by a master, who was also an artist, and they take us to an ancient castle as big as a city, with heroes and villains and people larger than life that are impossible to forget.” —Neil Gaiman “[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 “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 is a very, very great work.” —Robertson Davies, New York Times-bestselling author

First in the classic gothic trilogy. “A masterpiece . . . a moody, melancholy comedy with an underlying wit and profundity that cannot be denied.” —Speculiction The basis for the 2000 BBC series Now in development by Showtime As the novel opens, Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born. He stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle. Meanwhile, far away and in the kitchen, a servant named Steerpike escapes his drudgework and begins an auspicious ascent to power. Inside of Gormenghast, all events are predetermined by complex rituals, the origins of which are lost in time. The castle is peopled by dark characters in half-lit corridors. Dreamlike and macabre, Peake’s extraordinary novel is one of the most astonishing and fantastic works in modern fiction. Praise the Gormenghast Trilogy “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 is a very, very great work.” —Robertson Davies, New York Times-bestselling author “A sumptuous, poetic epic . . . considered by some to have an equal or even greater degree of importance to the development of modern fantasy as Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” —SFF180 “Mervyn Peake’s gothic masterpiece, the Gormenghast trilogy, begins with the superlative Titus Groan, a darkly humorous, stunningly complex tale of the first two years in the life of the heir to an ancient, rambling castle . . . This true classic is a feast of words unlike anything else in the world of fantasy. Those who explore Gormenghast castle will be richly rewarded.” —SFF Book Reviews

Six stories written across a range of genres and settings, including a macabre ghost story, and wry character studies drawn from the author''s life in London and on the island of Sark in the Channel Islands.

Summary: Uses cartoon-like drawings to represent such sayings as "Burning their bridges," "Sitting pretty," "To cut a long story short," and "I could just kick myself."

When the struggle between good and evil becomes embarrassingly personal, Mr. Pye is forced to embark on a campaign of unparalleled sin. Mervyn Peake, author of the internationally acclaimed Gormenghast novels, has created an extraordinarily im