Mervyn Peake | |
|---|---|
 Peake in the 1930s | |
| Born | Mervyn Laurence Peake (1911-07-09)9 July 1911 |
| Died | 17 November 1968(1968-11-17) (aged 57) Burcot, Oxfordshire, England |
| Education | Eltham College;Croydon School of Art;Royal Academy Schools |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, artist, poet, illustrator |
| Notable work | Gormenghast series |
| Spouse | Maeve Gilmore |
| Children | 3 |
| Relatives | Jack Peñate (grandson)[1] |
| Signature | |
 | |
Mervyn Laurence Peake (9 July 1911 – 17 November 1968) was a British writer, artist, poet, and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as theGormenghast books. The four works were part of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, the completion of which was prevented by his death. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporaryJ. R. R. Tolkien, but Peake's surreal fiction was influenced by his early love forCharles Dickens andRobert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies ofmythology andphilology.
Peake also wrote poetry andliterary nonsense in verse form, short stories for adults and children (Letters from a Lost Uncle, 1948), stage and radio plays, andMr Pye (1953), a relatively tightly structured novel in which God implicitly mocks the evangelical pretensions and cosy world-view of the eponymous hero.
Peake first made his reputation as a painter and illustrator during the 1930s and 1940s, when he lived in London, and he was commissioned to produce portraits of well-known people. For a short time at the end of World War II he was commissioned by various newspapers to depict war scenes. A collection of his drawings is still in the possession of his family. Although he gained little popular success in his lifetime, his work was highly respected by his peers, and his friends includedC. S. Lewis,Dylan Thomas andGraham Greene. His works are now included in the collections of theNational Portrait Gallery, theImperial War Museum andThe National Archives.
In 2008,The Times named Peake among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[2]
Mervyn Peake was born of British parents inKuling located on top ofMount Lu inJiujiang in 1911, only three months before the revolution and the founding of theRepublic of China. His father,Ernest Cromwell Peake, was amedical missionary doctor with theLondon Missionary Society of theCongregationalist tradition, and his mother, Amanda Elizabeth Powell, had come to China as a missionary assistant. Ernest and Amanda met in July 1903 atKuling (from the English word "cooling"), a summer European missionary resort inMount Lu about the Yangtze River inJiujiang. They got married in Hong Kong in December of that same year.[3]
The Peakes were given leave to visit England just beforeWorld War I in 1914 and returned to China in 1916. Mervyn Peake attendedTientsin Grammar School until the family left for England in December 1922 via theTrans-Siberian Railway. He would later write a novella about this time, titledThe White Chief of the Umzimbooboo Kaffirs. Peake never returned to China but it has been noted that Chinese influences can be detected in his works, not least in the castle of Gormenghast itself, which in some respects echoes his birthplaceKuling, as well as the ancient walled city ofBeijing and the enclosed compound where he grew up inTianjin.[citation needed] It is also likely that his early exposure to the contrasts between the lives of the Europeans and of the Chinese, and between the poor and the wealthy in China, also exerted an influence on the Gormenghast books.[citation needed]
His education continued atEltham College,Mottingham (1923–1929), where his talents were encouraged by his English teacher, Eric Drake. Peake completed his formal education atCroydon School of Art in the autumn of 1929, and then from December 1929 to 1933 at theRoyal Academy Schools, where he first painted in oils. By this time he had written his first long poem,A Touch o' the Ash. In 1931, he had a painting accepted for display by theRoyal Academy and exhibited his work with the so-called "Soho Group".
His early career in the 1930s was as a painter in London, although he lived on the Channel Island ofSark for a time. He first moved to Sark in 1932 where his former teacher Eric Drake was setting up an artists' colony.[4] In 1934, Peake exhibited with the Sark artists both in the Sark Gallery built by Drake and at the Cooling Galleries in London, and in 1935 he exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Leger Galleries in London.
In 1936, he returned to London and was commissioned to design the sets and costumes forThe Insect Play, and his work was acclaimed inThe Sunday Times. He also began teachinglife drawing atWestminster School of Art where he met the painterMaeve Gilmore, whom he married in 1937. They had three children: Sebastian (1940–2012), Fabian (born 1942), and Clare (born 1949).
Peake had a very successful exhibition of paintings at the Calmann Gallery in London in 1938 and his first book, the self-illustrated children's pirate romanceCaptain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor (based on a story he had written around 1936), was first published in 1939 byCountry Life. In December 1939, he was commissioned byChatto & Windus to illustrate a children's book,Ride a Cock Horse and Other Nursery Rhymes, published for the Christmas market in 1940.
_(Art.IWM_ART_LD_2851).jpg)
At the outbreak ofWorld War II, he applied to become awar artist, for he was keen to put his skills at the service of his country. He imaginedAn Exhibition by the Artist, Adolf Hitler, in which horrific images of war with ironic titles were offered as "artworks" by the Nazi leader.[5] Although the drawings were bought by the BritishMinistry of Information, Peake's application was turned down and he wasconscripted into the Army, where he served first with theRoyal Artillery, then with theRoyal Engineers. He began writingTitus Groan at this time.
In April 1942, after his requests for commissions as a war artist – or even leave to depict war damage in London – had been consistently refused, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to Southport Hospital. That autumn he was taken on as a graphic artist by the Ministry of Information for a period of six months to work on propaganda illustrations. The next spring he was invalided out of the Army. In 1943 he was commissioned by theWar Artists' Advisory Committee, WAAC, to paintglassblowers at theChance Brothers factory inSmethwick where cathode ray tubes for early radar sets were being produced.[6] Peake was next given a full-time, three-month WAAC contract to depict various factory subjects and was also asked to submit a large painting showing RAF pilots being debriefed.[7][8] Some of these paintings are on permanent display in Manchester Art Gallery whilst other examples are in theImperial War Museum collection.[9]
The five years between 1943 and 1948 were some of the most productive of his career. He finishedTitus Groan andGormenghast and completed some of his most acclaimed illustrations for books by other authors, includingLewis Carroll'sThe Hunting of the Snark (for which he was reportedly paid only £5) andAlice in Wonderland,Samuel Taylor Coleridge'sThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner, theBrothers Grimm'sHousehold Tales,All This and Bevin Too byQuentin Crisp andRobert Louis Stevenson'sStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, as well as producing many original poems, drawings, and paintings.
Peake designed the logo forPan Books. The publishers offered him either a flat fee of £10 or a royalty of onefarthing per book. On the advice ofGraham Greene, who told him that paperback books were a passing fad that would not last, Peake opted for the £10.[10]
A book of nonsense poems,Rhymes Without Reason, was published in 1944 and was described byJohn Betjeman as "outstanding". Shortly after the war ended in 1945,Edgar Ainsworth, the art editor ofPicture Post, commissioned Peake to visit France and Germany for the magazine.[11] With writerTom Pocock, Peake was among the first British civilians to witness the horrors of theNaziconcentration camp atBelsen, where the remaining prisoners, too sick to be moved, were dying before his very eyes. He made several drawings, but not surprisingly he found the experience profoundly harrowing, and expressed in deeply felt poems the ambiguity of turning their suffering into art.[12]
In 1946, the family moved toSark, where Peake continued to write and illustrate, and Maeve painted.Gormenghast was published in 1950,[13][14] and the family moved back to England, settling inSmarden, Kent. Peake taught part-time at theCentral School of Art, began his comic novelMr Pye, and renewed his interest in theatre. His father died that year and left his house in Hillside Gardens inWallington, Surrey to Peake.[15]Mr Pye was published in 1953, and he later adapted it as a radio play. TheBBC broadcast other plays of his in 1954 and 1956.
In 1956, Mervyn and Maeve visited Spain, financed by a friend who hoped that Peake's health, which was already declining, would be improved by the holiday. That year his novellaBoy in Darkness was published beside stories byWilliam Golding andJohn Wyndham in a volume calledSometime, Never. On 18 December theBBC broadcast his radio playThe Eye of the Beholder (later revised asThe Voice of One), in which an avant-garde artist is commissioned to paint a church mural. Peake placed much hope in his playThe Wit to Woo, which was finally staged in London's West End in 1957, but it was a critical and commercial failure.[16] This affected him greatly – his health degenerated rapidly and he was again admitted to hospital with a nervous breakdown.During this period he was published primarily inNew Worlds byMichael Moorcock, a consistent supporter since the mid-1950s.
He was showing unmistakable early symptoms of dementia, for which he was givenelectroconvulsive therapy, to little avail. Over the next few years he gradually lost the ability to draw steadily and quickly, although he still managed to produce some drawings with the help of his wife. Among his last completed works were the illustrations forBalzac'sDroll Stories (1961) and for his own poemThe Rhyme of the Flying Bomb (1962), which he had written some 15 years earlier.
Titus Alone was published in 1959 and was revised in 1970 by Langdon Jones, an editor ofNew Worlds, to remove apparent inconsistencies introduced by the publisher's careless editing. Jones, also a composer, setThe Rhyme of the Flying Bomb to music. A 1995 edition of all three completed Gormenghast novels includes a very short fragment of the beginning of what would have been the fourth Gormenghast novel,Titus Awakes, as well as a listing of events and themes he wanted to address in that and later Gormenghast novels.
Throughout the 1960s, Peake's health declined into physical and mental incapacitation, and he died on 17 November 1968 at a care home run by his brother-in-law, atBurcot, nearOxford. He was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's in the village ofBurpham, West Sussex.
A 2003 study published inJAMA Neurology assessed that Peake's death was the result ofdementia with Lewy bodies (DLB).[17]
His work, especially theGormenghast series, became much better known and more widely appreciated after his death. They have since been translated into more than two dozen languages.
Six volumes of Peake's verse were published during his lifetime;Shapes & Sounds (1941),Rhymes without Reason (1944),The Glassblowers (1950),The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb (1962),Poems & Drawings (1965), andA Reverie of Bone (1967). After his death cameSelected Poems (1972), followed byPeake's Progress in 1979 – though the Penguin edition of 1982, with many corrections, including a whole stanza inadvertently omitted from the hardback edition.The Collected Poems of Mervyn Peake was published byCarcanet Press in June 2008. Other collections includeThe Drawings of Mervyn Peake (1974),Writings and Drawings (1974), andMervyn Peake: the man and his art (2006). A limited edition of the collected works, issued to celebrate Peake's centenary year, was published byQueen Anne Press.
In 2010 an archive consisting of 28 containers of material, which included correspondence between Peake andLaurie Lee,Walter de la Mare andC. S. Lewis, plus 39 Gormenghast notebooks and original drawings for bothAlice Through the Looking Glass andAlice's Adventures in Wonderland, was acquired by theBritish Library.[18] Access to the Archive is available through the British Library website.[19] In July 2020, the British Library acquired from the Peake Estate a visual archive consisting of 300 of Peake's original illustrations for children's stories,Gormenghast, and other works includingTreasure Island.[20]
Peake's three children presented onBBC Radio Four in 2018 a half-hour memoir of their father's life, emphasizing the importance of the island ofSark.[21]
The first blue plaque on Sark was unveiled in Peake's honour at the Gallery Stores in the Avenue on 30 August 2019.[22]
In 1983, theAustralian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast eight hour-long episodes for radio dramatising the complete Gormenghast Trilogy. This was the first to include the third bookTitus Alone.
In 1984,BBC Radio 4 broadcast two 90-minute plays based onTitus Groan andGormenghast, adapted byBrian Sibley and starringSting asSteerpike andFreddie Jones as the Artist (narrator). A slightly abridged compilation of the two, running to 160 minutes, and entitledTitus Groan of Gormenghast, was broadcast on Christmas Day, 1992.BBC 7 repeated the original versions on 21 and 28 September 2003.
In 1986,Mr Pye was adapted as a four-partChannel 4 miniseries starringDerek Jacobi.
In 2000, theBBC andWGBH Boston co-produced a lavish miniseries, titledGormenghast, based on the first two books of the series. It starredJonathan Rhys-Meyers as Steerpike,Neve McIntosh as Fuchsia,June Brown as Nannie Slagg,Ian Richardson as Lord Groan,Christopher Lee as Flay,Richard Griffiths as Swelter,Warren Mitchell as Barquentine,Celia Imrie as Countess Gertrude,Lynsey Baxter andZoë Wanamaker as the twins Cora and Clarice, andJohn Sessions as Dr Prunesquallor. The supporting cast includedOlga Sosnovska,Stephen Fry andEric Sykes, and the series is also notable as the last screen performance by comedy legendSpike Milligan (as the Headmaster).
A 30-minute TV short film entitledA Boy in Darkness (also made in 2000 and adapted from Peake's novella) was the first production from the BBC Drama Lab. It was set in a "virtual" computer-generated world created by young computer game designers, and starredJack Ryder (fromEastEnders) as Titus, withTerry Jones (Monty Python's Flying Circus) narrating.
Irmin Schmidt, founder of seminal GermanKrautrock groupCan, wrote an opera calledGormenghast, based on the novels; it was first performed inWuppertal, Germany, in November 1998. A number of early songs by New Zealand rock groupSplit Enz were inspired by Peake's work. The song "The Drowning Man", by British bandThe Cure, is inspired by events inGormenghast, and the song "Lady Fuchsia" by another British band,Strawbs, is also based on events in the novels.
Peake's playThe Cave, which dates from the mid-1950s, was given a first public reading at theBlue Elephant Theatre inCamberwell (London) in 2009, and had its world premiere in the same theatre, directed by Aaron Paterson, on 19 October 2010.
In 2011, Brian Sibley adapted the story again, this time as six one-hour episodes broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as theClassic Serial starting on 10 July 2011. The serial was titledThe History of Titus Groan and adapted all three novels written by Mervyn Peake and the recently discovered concluding volume,Titus Awakes, completed by his widow,Maeve Gilmore.[23] It starredLuke Treadaway as Titus,David Warner as the Artist andCarl Prekopp as Steerpike. It also starredPaul Rhys,Miranda Richardson,James Fleet,Tamsin Greig,Fenella Woolgar,Adrian Scarborough andMark Benton among others.[24]
Sting owned the film rights to theGormenghast novels for a brief period in the 1980s, during which he discussed the possibility of adapting the novels into a series ofconcept albums, but he abandoned the idea after declaring the Radio 4 audio drama as ideal. As of 2015, authorNeil Gaiman was in talks to adapt the novels for the big screen.[25]
Authors who have cited Peake as influences on their work include:Neil Gaiman,[26]Joanne Harris,[27]Simon Maginn,[28]Christopher Fowler[29] andSusanna Clarke.[30]
Peake is considered to be one of the Big Three of (secondary world) Fantasy, along withJ. R. R. Tolkien andRobert E. Howard.[31] Their equivalents in thescience fiction genre areIsaac Asimov,Arthur C. Clarke, andRobert A. Heinlein.[32]
Boy in Darkness and other stories (2007, the correct text and five other pieces)
Other works
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Data from Wikidata| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
