Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Peake
artist, illustrator, novelist, poet
1911 - 1968
Mervyn Peake, a man of many talents, a creative virtuoso, and an eccentric genius, had a profound and singular interior idea. His work has frequently been compared to that of Dickens, albeit an off-center Dickens with a fantasy element.

But the name "Mervyn Peake" is relatively unknown in the United States. His books have been translated into many languages and have achieved a kind of cult status in England, while in America few have heard of the kingdom of Gormenghast. 

Excerpt from Titus Groan

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.