![]() ![]() On both sides of the Atlantic, there have been new illustrated editions of the Gormenghast novels and a new epilogue, Titus Awakes, has surfaced, written by Peake’s widow, Maeve Gilmore. Just over a decade later, the centenary of Peake’s birth presents us with the occasion to appreciate his abundant gifts as an illustrator (of, among other thing, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), novelist, poet, and writer of literary nonsense. ![]() But my curiosity was sufficiently stirred to seek out the trilogy. As it turned out, the BBC only adapted the first two Gormenghast novels, and then only cartoonishly. So the BBC’s television dramatization of what they promised would be a darker alternative to Tolkien had its appeal. At the time, I was stuck in the purgatorial antechamber between adolescence and maturity, reluctant to abandon certain habits of mind but keen to develop the imaginative sophistication that I thought might come in handy in college. I first encountered Mervyn Peake, as most readers do, through his baroque Gormenghast trilogy. ![]()
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