The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

Mervyn Peake

Jun 2011 · Random House

About this ebook

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.

'A master of the macabre and a traveller through the deeper and darker chasms of the imagination' The Times

'Dark, dense, baroque and hauntingly beautiful. Peake's lush prose and imagery are a pleasure to any lover of the beauty of the written word,' Carlos Ruiz-Zafron, author of The Shadow of the Wind

Ratings and reviews

This is one of those books that not everyone will love. It's verbose and heavy with rich and living description. But the characters are fascinating and the story is unlike any other. It's really ruined reading for me as I can't get the same kind of feeling from any other book.

Very disappointing. I wanted this edition because I love the illustrations, but many of the pages have missing text at the bottom. I've requested a refund.

Fantastic fantasy!

About the author

Mervyn Peake was born in 1911 in Kuling, Central Southern China, where his father was a medical missionary.His education began in China and then continued at Eltham College in South East London, followed by the Croydon School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools.Subsequently he became an artist, married the painter Maeve Gilmore in 1937 and had three children.During the Second World War he established a reputation as a gifted book illustrator for Ride a Cock Horse (1940), The Hunting of the Snark (1941), and The Rime of The Ancient Mariner (1943).Other books include Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland and Grimm's Household Tales (both 1946) and Treasure Island (1949).Titus Groan was published in 1946, followed in 1950 by Gormenghast.Among his other works are Shapes and Sounds (1941), Rhymes Without Reason (1944), Letters from a Lost Uncle (1948) and Mr Pye (1953). Titus Alone was published in 1959. Mervyn Peake died in 1968.